Top 40 Winston Groom Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

— Winston Groom

Featured in: National Chocolate Day Quotes

2. “Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away.”

— Winston Groom

3. “I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been.”

— Winston Groom

4. “Now you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!”

— Winston Groom

5. “Let me say this: bein a idiot is no box of chocolates.”

— Winston Groom

6. “There are jus times when you can’t let the right thing stand in yo way.”

— Winston Groom

7. “Let me say this: being an idiot is no box of chocolates. People laugh, lose patience, treat you shabby. Now they say folks supposed to be kind to the afflicted, but let me tell you this – it ain’t always that way. Even so, I got no complaints, cause I reckon I done live a pretty interesting life, so to speak.”

— Winston Groom

8. “You treat everybody like they are your friend. It ain’t that way in the world, Forrest. A lot of people ain’t your friend. They are just lookin at you the way a banker looks at somebody comes in for a loan – How I’m gonna fleece this rube? That’s the way it is, Forrest. That’s the way it is.”

— Winston Groom

9. “That’s all I have to say about that.”

— Winston Groom

10. “Eleanor Roosevelt had just conducted a two-month, twenty-five-thousand-mile tour of American fighting units in the South Pacific. This included Guadalcanal and other of the Solomon Islands, during which she is said to have told an audience of marines: “The marines that I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marines!”

— Winston Groom

11. “Let me say this: bein a idiot is no box of chocolates. People laugh, lose patience, treat you shabby.”

— Winston Groom

12. “Dream, but don’t quit your day job.”

— Winston Groom

13. “When you feel there is an unfair burden on your shoulders, that’s just the way it is sometimes.”

— Winston Groom

14. “You might not be the smartest feller in town, but you’ve got more sense than most people.”

— Winston Groom

15. “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is.”

— Winston Groom

16. “So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain’t led no hum-drum life.”

— Winston Groom

17. “I cannot, in good conscience, allow money to be wasted on a failure.”

— Winston Groom

18. “If your gonna screw up, do it while you’re young. Older you get, the harder it is to bounce back.”

— Winston Groom

19. “I have suffered a loss, Forrest, far greater than my legs. It’s my spirit, my soul, if you will. There is only a blank there now – medals where my soul used to be.”

— Winston Groom

20. “The weeks go by so slow I almost think time passin backwards.”

— Winston Groom

21. “Stupid is as stupid looks.”

— Winston Groom

22. “I may be a idiot, but most of the time, anyway, I tried to do the right thing, an dreams is just dreams, ain’t they? So whatever else has happened, I am figgerin this: I can always look back an say, at least I ain’t led no hum-drum life.”

— Winston Groom

23. “I shrug my shoulders an nod my head, but somethin down in me sinkin fast. I am jus a po ole idiot, an now I have got the whole human race to look after.”

— Winston Groom

24. “Bullets an stuff be flying all over. It is something I simply cannot understand – why in hell is we doing all this, anyway? Playing football is one thing. But this, I do not know why. Goddamn.”

— Winston Groom

25. “I got to tell you, that if it weren’t for that harmonica music, i might of just packed up and gone home, but it made me feel so good, I can hardly describe it. Sort of like my whole body is the harmonica and the music give me goosebumps when I play it.”

— Winston Groom

26. “By 1929 a handful of farsighted flight pioneers had concluded that “aviation could not progress until planes could fly safely day or night in almost any kind of weather.” Foremost among these was Dr. Jimmy Doolittle, recently armed with a PhD in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In.”

— Winston Groom

27. “I found the head nurse and asked her, and she said Dan has been flown back to America on account of they can take better care of him there. I asked her if he is okay, and she said, ‘Yeah, if you can call two punctured lungs, a severed intestine, spinal separation, a missing foot, a truncated leg, and third degree burns over half the body okay, then he is just fine. I thanked her, and went on my way.”

— Winston Groom

28. “Sure, Gump,” he say. “What the hell – we will even get him accommodations in first class.”

— Winston Groom

29. “Mama read it an began pulling her hair an weepin an praisin the Lord, ‘cause it say I am ‘Temporarily Deferred’ on account of I am a numbnuts.”

— Winston Groom

30. “So the next day I asked Dan how is it that Bubba can get killed, and what kind of half assed nature law would allow that. He thought about it for a while, and said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you, Forrest, all of these laws are not specially pleasing to us. But there is laws nonetheless. Like when a tiger pounce on a monkey in the jungle – bad for the money, but good for the tiger. That is just the way it is.”

— Winston Groom

31. “But let me tell you this: sometimes at night, when I look up at the stars, an see the whole sky jus laid out there, don’t you think I ain’t rememberin it all. I still got dreams like anybody else, an ever so often, I am thinkin about how things might of been. An then, all of a sudden, I’m forty, fifty, sixty years ole, you know?”

— Winston Groom

32. “To save energy, do not go out lookin’ for trouble; chances are, it will find you soon enough.”

— Winston Groom

33. “Jesus, we forgot the goddamn ape!”

— Winston Groom

34. “Try not to screw up. This will satisfy a few people, and amaze everybody else.”

— Winston Groom

35. “Be very suspicious if somebody says they want to make a movie of your life story.”

— Winston Groom

36. “One day we found them. They must of been holding a gook convention or something, cause it seem like the same sort of deal as when you step on a anthill and they all come swarming around.”

— Winston Groom

37. “The Cracked Eggs, he says, have broken up.”

— Winston Groom

38. “He unbutton his jacket an inside, on his shirt, is all his medals – Purple Heart, Silver Star – must of been ten or twelve of them. “They remind me of somethin,” he said. “I’m not quite sure what – the war, of course, but that’s jus a part of it. I have suffered a loss, Forrest, far greater than my legs. It’s my spirit, my soul, if you will. There is only a blank there now – medals where my soul used to be.”

— Winston Groom

39. “There was some people hurt far worst than I was in that hospital, let me tell you. Poor old boys with arms and legs and hands and who knows what else missing. Boys what had been shot in their stomach and chests and faces. At night the place sound like a torture chamber – them fellers be howling and crying and calling for their mamas.”

— Winston Groom

40. “The one thing I remember from Fort Benning is that they didn’t seem to be nobody much smarter than I was, which was certainly a relief.”

— Winston Groom

41. “Your chances of winnin’ the lottery get a lot better if you buy a ticket.”

— Winston Groom

42. “After a trip to Japan Mitchell famously predicted that the next war would be fought in the Pacific after a Japanese sneak attack on a Sunday morning in Hawaii. Eddie Rickenbacker, who had served as Mitchell’s driver before becoming an ace combat pilot, wryly quipped that “the only people who paid any attention to him were the Japanese.” Most.”

— Winston Groom

43. “Nobody ever went broke sayin’ ‘Good Mornin″ to folks.”

— Winston Groom

44. “I know that bein a idiot an all, I ain’t sposed to have no philosophy of my own, but maybe it’s just because nobody never took the time to talk to me bout it.”

— Winston Groom

45. “So I tole him a little bit about my checkered career, an after he listened for a while, Tom Hanks says, “Well, Mr. Gump, you are sure a curious feller. Sounds like somebody ought to make a movie of your life’s story.”

— Winston Groom

46. “The fact that I were too dumb to play college football did not seem to impress the United States Army none.”

— Winston Groom