Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “Elizabeth opened every show by insisting that cooking wasn’t easy and that the next thirty minutes might very well be torturous.”

— Bonnie Garmus

402. “Although he didn’t admit to it, Wakely found himself agreeing. No one had to pray to Snow White or fear the wrath of Rumpelstiltskin to understand the message. The stories were short, memorable, and covered all the bases of love, pride, folly, and forgiveness. Their rules were bite-sized: Don’t be a jerk. Don’t hurt other people or animals. Share what you have with others less fortunate. In other words, be nice. He decided to change the topic.”

— Bonnie Garmus

403. “And the fact that she pretends to be Madeline’s friend to get her lunch,” she continued, “is absolutely reprehensible.” “Wh-who are you again?” stammered Walter. “Elizabeth Zott!” she barked back. “Madeline Zott’s mother!” Walter nodded, trying to understand. As a longtime producer of afternoon television, he knew drama. But this? He continued to stare. She was stunning. He was literally stunned by her. Was she auditioning for something.”

— Bonnie Garmus

404. “Excuse me, Father,” Calvin said, leafing through his copy, “but there’s a problem with mine. Some of the pages are missing.” “They’re not missing, Calvin,” the priest said. “They’ve been removed.” “Why?” “Because they’re wrong, that’s why. Now open your books to page one hundred nineteen, boys. We’ll start with – ” “Evolution’s missing,” Calvin persisted, riffling through the pages. “That’s enough, Calvin.” “But – ” The ruler cracked down hard against his knuckles.”

— Bonnie Garmus

405. “Take the helm. Steer. When in doubt, pretend.”

— Bonnie Garmus

406. “Almost no one bought this story. Dr. Meyers had a reputation.”

— Bonnie Garmus

407. “I believe in a few things,” he corrected. “Mostly the things about not giving up hope, not giving in to darkness.”

— Bonnie Garmus

408. “A man can make lunch, Mr. Pine. It is not biologically impossible.”

— Bonnie Garmus

409. “Humans. Some of them didn’t seem to grasp their actual status within the animal kingdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

410. “And while Elizabeth wasn’t entirely keen on the idea – she was a research chemist – she took the job for the usual reasons: it paid more and she had a child to support.”

— Bonnie Garmus

411. “Well,” she said, “she keeps repeating how by Saturday night, she’ll finally be Mrs. Peter Dickman. As if changing her name is the finish line for a race she’s been in since she was six.”

— Bonnie Garmus

412. “This time, though, we’ll make sure everyone knows you earned your place. You’re a bright girl, Lizzie. It’s possible.”

— Bonnie Garmus

413. “Not that you,” he said. “Not the ‘this is going to be really, really complicated’ you. Not the ‘far too many people do not appreciate the work and sacrifice that goes into being a wife, a mother, a woman’ you.”

— Bonnie Garmus

414. “There was an aquamarine water-filled quarry below; she’d hit it like a missile. Her toes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

415. “Believe me. But that’s not really your problem. It’s not that you want out.” She turned to look at him, confused. “It’s that you want back in.”

— Bonnie Garmus

416. “Constant adaptations brought about by a series of never-ending mistakes?”

— Bonnie Garmus

417. “What a mess devotion was.”

— Bonnie Garmus

418. “There was so much to do she couldn’t even make a to-do list because making a list was just one more thing to do. Plus, she still had all of her other.”

— Bonnie Garmus

419. “Life’s a mystery, isn’t it? People who try and plan it inevitably end up disappointed.”

— Bonnie Garmus

420. “Mother of god,” Mrs. Sloane said as Elizabeth placed a cup of coffee in front of her. “Have you never heard of Folger’s?”

— Bonnie Garmus

421. “Roth stared down at the table. He’d had a normal upbringing – two parents, no suicides, no murders, not even a single wayward touch from a priest in his parish. And yet he still found plenty of to complain about. What was wring with him? Just as people had a bad habit of dismissing others’ problems and tragedies, so too did they have a bad habit of not appreciating what they have. Or had.”

— Bonnie Garmus

422. “She supposed it took a certain type of skill to be able to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.”

— Bonnie Garmus

423. “A fairy godmother is just another word for philanthropist.”

— Bonnie Garmus

424. “I wanted to know about your relationship with Evans.” “How is that your business?” Again, he felt the weight of the dog’s eyes on him. I have mapped and memorized the location of your carotid artery.”

— Bonnie Garmus

425. “Did he sleep with other women? What a question. Didn’t everyone?”

— Bonnie Garmus

426. “She tried to talk with them, but each gave her the cold shoulder in their own way, and later, as she was walking by the lounge, she overheard the same few grousing about her – about how she took herself so seriously, how she thought she was better than any of them, how she’d refused dates from all of them, even the single men.”

— Bonnie Garmus

427. “Yet here she was, a single mother, the lead scientist on what had to be the most unscientific experiment of all time: the raising of another human being. Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice.”

— Bonnie Garmus

428. “Because in a man’s mind, why else would a woman mention bombykol on a Friday evening in an empty parking lot when the soft breeze was coming out of the west carrying the scent of her extremely expensive shampoo directly into his nasal cavity unless it was all part of a plot to get more beakers?”

— Bonnie Garmus

429. “As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing. Get two or more rowers in a room and the conversation goes from normal topics like work or weather to long, pointless stories about boats, blisters, oars, grips, ergs, feathers, workouts, catches, releases, recoveries, splits, seats, strokes, slides, starts, settles, sprints, and whether the water was really “flat” or not.”

— Bonnie Garmus

430. “Just as people have a bad habit of dismissing others’ problems and tragedies, so too did they have a bad habit of not appreciating what they have.”

— Bonnie Garmus

431. “She’d faced tough things before. She would weather what came. But weathering is called weathering for a reason. It erodes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

432. “One thing I’ve learned, Calvin: people will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems.”

— Bonnie Garmus

433. “But why is saying what you think so rare?” “Because there are consequences,” Harriet said.”

— Bonnie Garmus

434. “This was called ignoring. Or wait, no. Ignorance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

435. “The problem with being a minister was how many times a day he had to lie. This was because people needed constant reassurance that things were okay or were going to be okay instead of the more obvious reality that things were bad and were only going to get worse.”

— Bonnie Garmus

436. “Which, he thought, as he grabbed his tennis shoes, had to be the very definition of love. To actually want to change for someone else.”

— Bonnie Garmus

437. “It wasn’t that he couldn’t function without her, but rather that he didn’t see the point of functioning without her.”

— Bonnie Garmus

438. “Because while stupid people may not know they’re stupid because they’re stupid, surely unattractive people must know they’re unattractive because of mirrors.”

— Bonnie Garmus

439. “I used to tell myself every day was new. That anything could happen.”

— Bonnie Garmus

440. “People like my father preach love, but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs can not be tolerated. They day my Mother caught my brother holding hands with another boy, that was it. After a year of hearing he was an aberration and didn’t deserve to live, he went out to the shed with a rope.”

— Bonnie Garmus

441. “One thing I’ve learned, Calvin: people will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems. It’s a lot easier to have faith in something you can’t see, can’t touch, can’t explain, and can’t change, rather than to have faith in something you actually can.” She sighed. “One’s self, I mean.”

— Bonnie Garmus

442. “Elizabeth hadn’t had a pet before and she wasn’t sure she had one now. Six-Thirty wasn’t human, but he seemed to possess a humanity that far surpassed what she’d found in most people.”

— Bonnie Garmus

443. “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for.”

— Bonnie Garmus

444. “Losing a loved one has a way of revealing a too-simple truth: that time, as people often claimed but never heeded, really was precious.”

— Bonnie Garmus

445. “Five minutes later, Roth was riding next to Elizabeth Zott in the front seat of her old blue Plymouth, the dog and the photographer relegated to the back. “He doesn’t bite, does he?” the photographer asked as he crammed himself against the window. “All dogs have the ability to bite,” she said over her shoulder. “Just as all humans have the ability to cause harm. The trick is to act in a reasonable way so that harm becomes unnecessary.”

— Bonnie Garmus

446. “Still, he sensed that most people did not listen to their dogs. This was called ignoring. Or wait, no. Ignorance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

447. “You can’t fix it because the world doesn’t work that way. Life isn’t fair.”

— Bonnie Garmus

448. “The only excitement had come at the beginning but it had worn off like cheap nail polish.”

— Bonnie Garmus

449. “Mrs. Mudford clicked her teeth. “You misunderstand me, Mrs. Zott. Children interrupt; that I can deal with. What I can’t deal with is a child who wants to change the discussion to civil rights. This is kindergarten, not The Huntley-Brinkley Report.”

— Bonnie Garmus

450. “And there they were in the thick of it, the only living dead things.”

— Bonnie Garmus