The Best Nomi Marks Quotes

Croome: How much do you know about BPO?
Nomi: Biologic Preservation Organization. Began in the early '60s by...
Will: ...Ruth El-Saadawi.
Croome: An incredible woman. One of the great scientific minds of our time. She believed sapiens and sensorium to be obligate mutualisms, dependent on one another for survival. BPO was founded by her and dedicated to her vision of natural and ethical balance.
Riley: That doesn't sound like the same organization we know from Iceland.
Croome: No.
Will: So what changed?
Croome: The same thing that changed for the rest of the world 9/11. The end of the Cold War mutated into the endless War on Terror. And whether we're talking about spies or terrorists, sensates, by their nature, are a threat to secrecy and sovereignty.

The: Hello, Nomi Marks.
Nomi: You know who I am?
The: We've had our eyes on you.
Nomi: That's kind of cool and kind of creepy.
The: Yeah, it sounded a little stalkery. Didn't mean it like that.

Nomi: You know, I still can't believe how you're just taking this all in stride. If someone told me they were hearing other people's voices in their heads, I'd be sure they slipped off their medication.
Grace: Child of the sixties. If you didn't hear voices at least once, you were doing something wrong.

Nomi: It's completely crazy-making how all of these emotions, they just come bubbling up out of nowhere.
Grace: Sounds like menopause.

Lito: I'm afraid I will lose everything that I've worked for.
Nomi: I know how that feels. But at a certain point, I realized there's a huge difference between what we work for and what we live for.

The: If you accept this offer, there may come a day when we ask something of you.
Nomi: What?
The: Nothing venal, vile or vainglorious. Rather a vital vertex of virtue, valor and virtuosity in the name of veracity.
Amanita: Wow. Did you just come up with that yourself?
The: No. There's an app for it.

Nomi: The question is, why these people, why these minds? Why not a mind that feels, I don't know, more in sync with my own?
Grace: Maybe that's the point.
Nomi: How so?
Grace: I teach a class on evolution every semester, and we talk about the engine of evolution, which is variation. I imagine that to be something more than what evolution would define as "yourself," you'd need something different from yourself.

Amanita: [Referring to breaking the oil line in the car to create a distraction] Men cannot stand to see a beautiful car in trouble.
Nomi: It's some kind of primal instinct. I mean, look at you, you're hesitating.
Will: It's a really nice car.
Nomi: See?
[Will breaks the oil line]
BPO: [after the car has arrived at BPO, and is seriously smoking] Such a shame!
BPO: It's a '14.
BPO: It's only a year old, man!

Amanita: Okay, you're having a conversation with an agent in Chicago right now?
Nomi: I guess I am.
Amanita: Cool. FaceTime without a phone.

Nomi: The night before I went into the hospital was the longest and the loneliest I've ever felt in my life. But no one stopped me. When I woke up the first thing I felt was Teagan's hand holding mine. Her smile was the first thing I saw. And her voice singing "Happy Birthday" was the first thing I heard. It was in that moment my sister taught me what "family" actually means.

Nomi: That locker room might have made my father the man that he is, but it also made me the woman that I am. After that, I quit the swim club. I quit trying to fit in, trying to be one of them. I knew I never would be. But more importantly, I didn't want to be. Their violence was petty and ignorant, but ultimately, it was true to who they were. The real violence, the violence I realized was unforgivable, is the violence we do to ourselves when we're too afraid to be who we really are.

Nomi: This guy's about as intersting as a mouthful of sawdust. He doesn't even have any porn stashed away.
Amanita: No porn? He is weird.

Nomi: I've been thinking about my life, and all of the mistakes that I've made. The ones that stay with me, the ones that I regret, are the ones that I made because of fear. For a long time, I was afraid to be who I am because I was taught by my parents that there's something wrong with someone like me. Something offensive, something you would avoid, maybe even pity. Something that you could never love. My mom, she's a fan of St. Thomas Aquinas. She calls pride a sin. And of all the venal and mortal sins, St. Thomas saw pride as the queen of the seven deadlies. He saw it as the ultimate gateway sin that would turn you quickly into a sinaholic. But hating isn't a sin on that list. Neither is shame. I was afraid of this parade because I wanted it so badly to be a part of it. So today, I'm marching for that part of me that was once afraid to march and for all the people who can't march - the people who living lives like I did. Today, I march to remember that I'm not just a me but I'm also a we. And we march with pride.

Nomi: ...impossibility is still just a kiss away from reality.

Nomi: BPO, the Biologic Preservation Organization. A multi-national research group studying the human genome in the search for positive and consequential mutations.
Amanita: Well, that doesn't sound sinister at all.

Will: Do I know you?
Lito: Yeah. We had sex.
Will: Wha - Oh. Uh...
[stammers]
Will: Eh... It - That was...
Lito: Very special.
Will: Oh, hey... Uh...
Nomi: [Pops up in between them, breaking the lingering awkwardness] We're on a clock here, fellas.

Nomi: The real violence, the violence I realized was unforgivable, is the violence that we do to ourselves, when we're too afraid to be who we really are.