INCEPTION
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Starring:
Leonardo DiCaprio - Cobb
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Arthur
Ellen Page - Ariadne
Tom Hardy - Eames
Ken Watanabe - Saito
Dileep Rao - Yusuf
Cillian Murphy - Robert Fischer, Jr.
Tom Berenger - Browning
Marion Cotillard - Mal
Pete Postlethwaite - Maurice Fischer
Michael Caine - Miles
Lukas Haas - Nash
Earl Cameron - Elderly Man
Inception Quotes
[an old looking Saito is sitting opposite Cobb, after his men have found
him washed ashore]
Saito: [to Cobb] Are you here to kill me? I know what this is.
[he picks up the small object from the table]
Saito: I've seen one before many, many years ago. It belonged to a man
I met in a half-remembered dream. A man possessed of some radical
notions.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus?
An intestinal worm?
Arthur: Ah, what Mr Cobb is trying to...
Dom Cobb: An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken
hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that
is fully formed, fully understood. That sticks, right in there somewhere.
[points to his head]
Saito: For someone like you to steel?
Arthur: Yes in dream state your conscious defenses are lowered and it
makes your thoughts vulnerable to theft. It's called extraction.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: [to Saito] I know how to search your mind and find your secrets.
I know the tricks and I could teach them to you so that even when you're
asleep your defense is never down. Look if you want my help, you're
gonna have to be completely open with me. I need to know my way around
your thoughts better than your wife, better than your therapist, better
than anyone. This is a dream and you have a safe full of secrets and
I need to know what's in that safe. In order for this all to work, you
need to completely let me in.
________________________________________
Mal: If I jump would I survive?
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: Mal what are you doing here?
Mal: I thought you might be missing me.
Dom Cobb: You know that I am. I...I can't trust you anymore.
________________________________________
Mal: Tell me, do the children miss me?
Dom Cobb: I can't imagine.
________________________________________
[referring to Mal]
Dom Cobb: Did she tell you...or have you known all along?
Saito: Are you here to steal from me or do we actually sleep? I want
to know the name of your employer?
[Mal hold a gun to Arthurs head]
Dom Cobb: Ah, there's no use threatening me. I'm in a dream, right Mal?
Mal: That depends on what you're threatening. Killing him would just
wake him up. But pain...[she shoot Arthur in the knee]...pain is in
the mind and judging by the decorum we're in your mind aren't we Arthur?
________________________________________
[Arthur wakes up from his dream after he gets shot by Cobb]
Nash: What are you doing it's too soon?
Arthur: I know. The dream is collapsing. Try to keep Saito under a little
bit longer, we're almost done.
________________________________________
Arthur: This isn't going to work. Wake him up.
[Nash goes to Cobb trying to wake him up]
Nash: He won't wake!
Arthur: Give him a kick. Unplug him.
________________________________________
Arthur: They're getting closer.
Saito: You got what you came for.
Dom Cobb: Well, that's not true. You left out a key piece of information,
didn't you? You held something back because you knew what we were up
to. Question is, why did you let us in at all?
Saito: An audition.
Dom Cobb: An audition for what?
Saito: Doesn't matter. You failed.
Dom Cobb: We extracted every bit of information you had in there.
Saito: But your deception was obvious.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: You don't seem to understand Mr Saito, the corporation that
hired us, they won't accept failure. We won't last two days.
Arthur: Cobb.
[indicating to Cobb to speed things up]
Dom Cobb: Looks like I'm going to have to do this a little more simply.
[throws Saito onto the floor and hold a gun to his head]
Dom Cobb: TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW? TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW NOW?
[Saito laughs to himself]
Saito: I've always hated this carpet.
[runs his fingers through the carpet]
Saito: It's stained and frayed in such distinctive ways but it's very
definitely made out of wool. And now...now it's polyester, which means
that I'm not lying on my carpet in my apartment. You have lived up to
your reputation Mr Cobb, I'm still dreaming!
________________________________________
Saito: Dream within a dream, ha? I'm impressed. But in my dream you
play by my rules.
Dom Cobb: Ah yes. But you see Mr Saito, it's not your dream.
Nash: We're in mine.
________________________________________
Arthur: Asshole! How'd you mess up the carpet?
Nash: It wasn't my fault.
Arthur: You're the architect!
Nash: I didn't know he was going to rub his damn cheek on it!
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: I have it under control.
Arthur: I'd hate to see you out of control.
________________________________________
[Cobb's on the phone talking to his children]
James: When are you coming home dad?
Dom Cobb: Well, I can't sweetheart. I can't. Not for a while, remember?
James: Why?
Dom Cobb: I told you. I'm...I'm away because I'm working. Right?
Phillipa: Grandma says you're never coming back.
Dom Cobb: Phillipa is that you? Well, put grandma on the phone for me
will you?
Phillipa: She's shaking her head.
Dom Cobb: Well, let's just hope she's wrong about that.
________________________________________
Arthur: Hey are you okay?
Dom Cobb: Yeah...yeah, I'm fine. Why?
Arthur: Well down at the dream, Mal showing up
Dom Cobb: Ah come on. I'm sorry about your leg. It won't happen again.
Arthur: It's getting worse isn't it?
Dom Cobb: One apology is all you're getting, all right Arthur.
________________________________________
[referring to Nash]
Saito: He sold you out. Failed the company and bargained for his life.
So I offer you the satisfaction.
[Saito's attendant offers a gun to Cobb]
Dom Cobb: It's not the way I deal with things.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: What do you want from us?
Saito: Inception. Is it possible?
Arthur: Of course not.
Saito: If you can steal an idea from someone¡¯s mind, why can't you
plant one there instead?
Arthur: Okay, here's me planting an idea in your head. I say to you,
don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about?
Saito: Elephants.
Arthur: Right, but it's not your idea because you know I gave it to
you. The subjects mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True
inspiration is impossible to fake.
Dom Cobb: That's not true.
Saito: Can you do it?
Dom Cobb: Are you offering me a choice? Cause I can find my own way
to square things with Cobalt.
Saito: Then you do have a choice.
Dom Cobb: Then I choose to leave sir.
________________________________________
Saito: How would you like to go home? To America. To your Children.
Dom Cobb: Can't fix that. No one can.
Saito: Just like inception.
Arthur: Cobb, come on.
Dom Cobb: How complex is the idea?
Saito: It's simple enough.
Dom Cobb: No idea is simple when you need to plant it in somebody else¡¯s
mind.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: If I were do this, if..if I even could do it, I'd need a
guarantee. How do I know you can deliver?
Saito: You don't! But I can. So do you want to take a leap of faith
or become an old man filled with regret waiting to die alone?
[Cobb nods his head]
Dom Cobb: Assemble your team Mr Cobb and choose your people more wisely.
________________________________________
Arthur: Look I know how much you want to go home. This can't be done.
Dom Cobb: Yes it can. You just have to go deep enough.
Arthur: You don't know that.
Dom Cobb: I've done it before.
Arthur: Who'd you do it to?
[Cobb doesn't answer]
________________________________________
Miles: Is it safe for you to be here?
Dom Cobb: Extradition between France and the United States is a
bureaucratic nightmare. You know that.
Miles: I think they might find a way to make it work in your case.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: I'm just doing what I know. I'm doing what you taught me.
Miles: I never taught you to be a thief.
Dom Cobb: No. You taught me to navigate people's minds. But after what
happened, there weren't a whole lot of legitimate ways to use that skill.
Miles: What are you doing here, Dom?
Dom Cobb: I think I found a way home. It's a job for some very, very
powerful people. People who I believe can fix my charges permanently.
But I need your help.
Miles: You're here to corrupt one of my brightest and best.
Dom Cobb: What I'm offering, you have to decide for themselves.
Miles: Money.
Dom Cobb: Not just money. You remember, it's the chance to build
cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed. Things that
couldn't exist in the real world.
________________________________________
Miles: Come back to reality Dom. Please.
Dom Cobb: Reality? Those kids, your grandchildren, they're waiting for
their father to come back home. That's their reality. And this job,
this last job, that's how I get there. I would not be standing here
if I knew any other way. I need an architect who is as good as I was.
Miles: I've got somebody better.
________________________________________
Miles: If you have a few moments Mr. Cobb has a job offer he would like
to discuss with you.
Ariadne: A work placement?
Dom Cobb: Not exactly.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: They say we only use a fraction of our brain's true potential.
Now, that's when we're awake. When we're asleep, our mind can build
almost anything.
Ariadne: Such as?
Dom Cobb: Well, imagine you're designing a building, all right? You
consciously create each aspect, but sometimes it feels like it's almost
creating itself, if you know what I mean.
Ariadne: Yeah. Like I'm discovering it.
Dom Cobb: Genuine inspiration, right? Now in a dream, our mind
continually does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously
and our mind does this so well that we don't even know it's happening.
That allows us to get right in the middle of that process.
Ariadne: How?
Dom Cobb: By taking over the creative part. Now this is where I need
you. You create the world of the dream. You bring the subject into that
dream and they fill it with their subconscious.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: Well dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's
only when we wake up that we realize that something was actually strange.
Let me ask you a question, you...you never really remember the beginning
of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's
going on.
Ariadne: I guess, yeah.
Dom Cobb: So how did we end up here?
Ariadne: Well, we just came from the...eh...
Dom Cobb: Think about it Ariadne, how did you get here? Where are you
right now?
Ariadne: We're dreaming?!
________________________________________
[waking up as her dream is collapsing]
Ariadne: If it's just a dream then why can you...
Dom Cobb: Cause it's never just a dream is it? And a face full of glass
hurts like hell. When you're in it, it feels real.
________________________________________
Ariadne: Five minutes? What...we were talking like for at least an hour.
Dom Cobb: In a dream your mind functions more quickly. Therefore, time
seems to feel more slow.
Arthur: Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream
world.
________________________________________
[walking in what seems like a Parisian street]
Ariadne: Who are the people?
Dom Cobb: They are projections of my subconscious.
Ariadne: Yours?
Dom Cobb: Yes. Remember you are the dreamer you build this world. I
am the subject my mind populates it. You can literally talk to my
subconscious, that's one of the ways extract information from the
subject.
Ariadne: What else do you do?
Dom Cobb: By creating something secure like a...lika a bank vault or
a jail. The mind automatically fills it with information it's trying
to protect.
________________________________________
Ariadne: My questions is what happens when you start messing with the
physics of it?
[we then see another street folding on top of the street they are standing
in]
Ariadne: Something isn't it?
Dom Cobb: Yes it is.
________________________________________
[refering to the people they are passing whilst walking in the street]
Ariadne: Why are they all looking at me?
Dom Cobb: Cause my subconscious feels that someone else is creating
this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections
start to converge on you.
Ariadne: Converge?
Dom Cobb: They sense the foreign nature of the dreamer. They attack
like white blood cells fighting an infection.
Ariadne: They're going to attack us?
Dom Cobb: No. Just you.
________________________________________
[somone walks deliberately into Ariadne]
Ariadne: Mind telling your subconscious to take it easy.
Dom Cobb: It's my subconscious. Remember, I can't control it.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: I know this bridge. This place is real isn't it?
Ariadne: Yeah. I cross it everyday to get to the college.
Dom Cobb: Never recreate places from your memory. Always imagine new
places.
Ariadne: You gotta draw from stuff you know, right?
Dom Cobb: Only use details. A...a...a street lamp or a phone booth.
Never entire areas.
Ariadne: Why not?
Dom Cobb: Because building a dream from your memory is the easiest way
to lose your grasp on what's real and what isn't real.
Ariadne: Is that what happened to you?
________________________________________
[Ariadne wakes up all shaken after getting stabbed by Mal in the dream
she was sharing with Cobb]
Ariadne: Why...why wouldn't I wake up?
Arthur: Cause there was still some time on the clock and you can't wake
up from within a dream unless you die.
Dom Cobb: She'll need a totum.
[shouting to Cobb as he walks away]
Ariadne: That's some subconscious you've got on you Cobb. She's a real
charmer.
Arthur: Oh...I see you met Mrs Cobb.
________________________________________
Arthur: So a totum, you need a small object, potentially heavy, something
you can have on you all the time that no one else knows.
Ariadne: Like...like a coin?
Arthur: No. It needs to be more unique than that. This is a loaded die.
[Ariadne tries to grab the dice]
Arthur: I can't let you touch it, that would defeat the purpose. See
only I know the balance and the weight of this particular loaded die.
That way when you look at your totum, you know beyond a doubt that you're
not in someone elses dream.
________________________________________
[to Arthur]
Ariadne: I...I don't know if you can't see what's going on or if you
just don't want to, but Cobb has some serious problems that he's trying
to bury down there. And I'm not about to just open my mind to someone
like that!
[she gets up and leaves]
Dom Cobb: She'll be back. I've never seen anyone pick it up that quickly
before. Reality is not going to be enough for her now. When she comes
back...when she comes back you're going to have her building mazes.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: Inception, now before you bother telling me it's impossible...
Eames: No, it's perfectly possible. It's just bloody difficult.
________________________________________
Eames: Listen if you're going to perform inception, you need
imagination.
Dom Cobb: Let me ask you something, have you done it before?
Eames: We tried it, we got the idea in place but it didn't take.
Dom Cobb: You didn't plant it deep enough?
Eames: Well, it's not about depth. You need the simplest version of
the idea in order for it to grow naturally in the subject's mind. It's
a very subtle art.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: We need the heir of a major corporation to dissolve his fathers
empire.
Eames: You see right there you have various political motivations and
anti-monopolistic sympticals and so forth, but all of that stuff it's
eh...it's really at the mercy of your subjects prejudices. What you
have to do is start at the absolute basic.
Dom Cobb: Which is what?
Eames: The relationship with the father.
________________________________________
Ariadne: Cobb said you'd be back.
Arthur: I tried not to come, but...
Ariadne: But there's nothing quite like it.
Arthur: It's just pure creation.
________________________________________
[to Ariadne]
Arthur: In a dream you can cheat architecture into impossible shapes.
That let's you create closed loops, like the Penrose steps. The infinite
staircase. See...
[the staircase they've been climbing up suddenly shift up]
Arthur: ...paradox. So a closed loop liked that will help you disguise
the boundaries of the dream you create.
________________________________________
Ariadne: My subconscious seems polite enough.
Arthur: Well wait, it'll turn ugly. No one wants to feel someone else
messing around in their mind.
________________________________________
Ariadne: Cobb can't build anymore can he?
Arthur: Well I don't know if he can't, but he won't. He thinks it's
safer if he doesn't know the layouts.
Ariadne: Why?
Arthur: He won't tell me, but I think it's Mal.
Ariadne: His ex-wife?
Arthur: No, not his ex.
Ariadne: They're still together?
Arthur: No. She...she's dead. What you see in there is just his
projection.
Ariadne: What was she like in real life?
Arthur: She was lovely.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: We'd need you there to tailor a compound specific to our needs.
Yusuf: Which are?
Dom Cobb: Great depth.
Yusuf: A dream within a dream. Two levels.
Dom Cobb: Three.
Yusuf: Not possible. That many dreams within dreams is too unstable!
Dom Cobb: It is possible, you just have to add a sedative.
Yusuf: No...a powerful sedative.
________________________________________
Saito: The only way to know you've done the job is if I go in there
with you.
Eames: There's no room for tourists in a job like this, Mr Saito.
Saito: This time it seems there is.
________________________________________
[seeing 12 people sleeping with powerful sedative, sharing their
dreams]
Saito: Why do they do it?
Yusuf: Tell him Mr Cobb.
Dom Cobb: After a while it becomes the only way you can dream.
Yusuf: Do you still dream, Mr Cobb?
________________________________________
[referring to the sleepers]
Eames: They come here everyday to sleep?
Elderly man: No. They come to be woken up. The dream has become their
reality. Who are you to say otherwise.
________________________________________
Dom Cobb: Mr Saito, this...this isn't your typical corporate espionage.
You...you asked me for inception, I do hope you understand the gravity
of that request. The seed that we plant in this man's mind will grow
into an idea. This idea will define him. It may come to change...well,
it may come to change everything about him.
Saito: We're the last company standing between them and total energy
dominance. We can no longer compete. So they'll control the energy supply
of the world. In effect, they become a new super power. The world needs
Robert Fischer to change his mind.
________________________________________
Eame: The vultures are circling. The sicker Maurice Fischer becomes,
the more powerful Peter Browning becomes. I've had ample opportunity
to observe Browning. Adopt his physical p