Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “The attack, or “unfortunate event,” as the admissions committee called it just before they formally rescinded her admittance to the doctoral program, had been her doing. Dr. Meyers had caught her cheating.”

— Bonnie Garmus

402. “Imagine if all men took women seriously.”

— Bonnie Garmus

403. “She was like a practical priest, someone to whom one could confess things – fears, hopes, mistakes – and expect in return, not a simpleton’s recipe for prayers and beads, or a psychologist’s standard “And how does that make you feel?” runaround, but actual wisdom. How to get on with the business at hand. How to survive.”

— Bonnie Garmus

404. “Don’t you know how being fired works? Step one: never tell anyone the truth – claim you won the lottery, inherited a cattle ranch in Wyoming, got a huge offer in New York, that sort of thing. Step two: drink to excess until you figure out what to do. Jesus. It’s like you’re not familiar with TV’s tribal ways!”

— Bonnie Garmus

405. “What a pretty picture!” he heard a mother say earlier that week as she looked down on her child’s ugly, violent scribble. Human parents, he’d noted, had a tendency to lie to their children.”

— Bonnie Garmus

406. “Do surgeons smile during appendectomies? No. Would you want them to? No. Cooking, like surgery, requires concentration.”

— Bonnie Garmus

407. “Or perhaps your marriage is more of a covalent bond,” she said, sketching a new structural formula. “And if so, lucky you, because that means you both have strengths that, when combined, create something even better.”

— Bonnie Garmus

408. “Ever since you brought your little Satan home, I’ve told myself, Go by and check on her.”

— Bonnie Garmus

409. “There will be other men, Miss Zott. Maybe not as famous or as influential as Mr. Evans, but men all the same.”

— Bonnie Garmus

410. “But then you talk and discover he’s a closet Nazi and thinks women complain too much.”

— Bonnie Garmus

411. “The next day – Tuesday – Mudford’s tree assignment revelations were the talk of the school: Madeline had been born out of wedlock; Amanda didn’t have a mother; Tommy Dixon’s father was an alcoholic. Not that any of the children themselves cared about these facts, but Mudford, her mean eyes wet with excitement, ate up the data like a hungry virus, then fed it to the other mothers, who spread it around school like frosting.”

— Bonnie Garmus

412. “He doesn’t scare me, he disgusts me.”

— Bonnie Garmus

413. “But now he had her and tomorrow she’d be in close proximity to an altar and he hypothesized such proximity could revise her perception of marriage. This theory even had a scientific name: associative interference. “No,” she said quickly.”

— Bonnie Garmus

414. “Elizabeth shook her head. When it came to equality, 1952 was a real disappointment.”

— Bonnie Garmus

415. “The problem with being a minister was how many times a day he had to lie.”

— Bonnie Garmus

416. “And thus he had to live with the knowledge that not only had this other father discarded him – without even meeting him – but that chemistry itself had spawned the grudge he could neither hide nor outgrow.”

— Bonnie Garmus

417. “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

418. “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

419. “Obviously, he knew how to find KCTV. Anyone who’d read The Incredible Journey would understand how un-incredible it was that dogs could find just about anything. He used to marvel at the needle in the haystack story Elizabeth had once read to him – marvel because what was so hard about finding a needle in a haystack? The scent of high carbon steel wire was unmistakable.”

— Bonnie Garmus

420. “Still, one of the panelists continued to drone on about how real change only ever arose through the application of kinetic energy. That’s when someone in the audience asked for an example of an ineffective collision – something that lacked energy and never changed, but still had a big effect. Evans had leaned into his microphone. “Religion,” he said. Then he got up and left.”

— Bonnie Garmus

421. “Humans need reassurance,” Wakely wrote back. “They need to know others survived the hard times.”

— Bonnie Garmus

422. “She was reading Madame Bovary aloud to Six-Thirty. She’d just finished telling Six-Thirty that fiction was problematic. People were always insisting they knew what it meant, even if the writer hadn’t meant that at all, and even if what they thought it meant had no actual meaning. “Bovary’s a great example,” she said. “Here, where Emma licks her fingers? Some believe it signifies carnal lust; others think she just really liked the chicken. As for what Flaubert actually meant? No one cares.”

— Bonnie Garmus

423. “Miss Frask, now age thirty-three, who, for the last four years, had dutifully followed every path promising promotion – from overselling Hastings’s benefits, to spying on specific departments, to authoring an in-house gossip column called “You Heard It Here First.”

— Bonnie Garmus

424. “He’d been officiating a funeral just last week – one of his congregants had died of lung cancer – and his message to the family, all of whom also smoked like chimneys, was that the man had died, not because of his four-pack-a-day habit, but because God needed him. The family, each inhaling deeply, thanked him for his wisdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

425. “Obviously, she had to go; no question about it. Hastings Research Institute had standards.”

— Bonnie Garmus

426. “To protect your villagers from certain death, always slash.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

432. “What a mess devotion was.”

— Bonnie Garmus

433. “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

434. “Because she says exactly what she thinks,” Walter said. “Which is very rare. But also because the food she makes is very, very good. And because everyone seems to want to learn chemistry. Oddly.”

— Bonnie Garmus

435. “Family is far more than biology.”

— Bonnie Garmus

436. “No one’s fine with a newborn, Miss Zott. The little gremlin will suck the life right out of you.”

— Bonnie Garmus

437. “The bishop had forced himself to take the check without looking at it, but once Wilson was out the door, he laid the slip of paper flat on his desk. Nice chunk of change. And more to come, thanks to his idea to create a memorial fund for someone who wasn’t even dead yet. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his chest. If anyone needed any further proof of God’s existence, they need look no further. All Saints: the place where God actually did help those who helped themselves.”

— Bonnie Garmus

438. “No,” he said. “What I meant was, I think you might benefit from steno school – dictation. I found a correspondence course for you,” he said, handing her a brochure. “The beauty is, you could do it at home in your free time.”

— Bonnie Garmus

439. “When I was a kid,” Calvin said quietly, “I used to tell myself every day was new. That anything could happen.” She took his hand again. “Did it help?” His mouth sagged as he remembered what the bishop at the boys home had revealed to him about his father. “I guess I’m just saying we shouldn’t let ourselves get stuck in the past.”

— Bonnie Garmus

440. “She’d hate it if she knew how much he worried and fussed, so he kept it to himself. But how could he not fuss over the person he loved more than anything, more than seemed even possible?”

— Bonnie Garmus

441. “It’s classic neurogenic deprivation,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “The brain doesn’t get the rest it needs, resulting in a drop in executive function and accompanied by an increase in corticosterone levels.”

— Bonnie Garmus

442. “A mother and a scientist,” she said, brushing sawdust off her sleeve. “You’re a father, aren’t you? A father and a scientist.”

— Bonnie Garmus

443. “It was on their honeymoon that he’d first masturbated to girlie magazines right next to her in bed.”

— Bonnie Garmus

444. “And now, here was this little girl claiming to be his daughter. God really did move in mysterious ways.”

— Bonnie Garmus

445. “When she was in labor and in horrific pain, convinced the baby was snatching her internal organs like suitcases as if to ensure she’d have plenty to wear on the outside, she screamed so violently the bed frame shook.”

— Bonnie Garmus

446. “Politicians don’t make it easy, do they?”

— Bonnie Garmus

447. “Who didn’t want to dip into the deep end of someone else’s childhood and meet all the usual suspects – the strict parent, the competitive siblings, the crazy aunt?”

— Bonnie Garmus

448. “He’d never been one for self-improvement – never even gotten through Dale Carnegie’s book about making friends and influencing people because ten pages in he realized he didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

— Bonnie Garmus

449. “Mad, I need you to understand something,” he said, noting, with shock, that his own hands were in the photograph. “Families aren’t meant to fit on trees. Maybe because people aren’t part of the plant kingdom – we’re part of the animal kingdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

450. “What a coincidence,” she shouted as she went straight over to a shelf and helped herself to a large box of beakers. “I’m busy too.” Then she marched out.”

— Bonnie Garmus