Interstellar Best Movie Quotes

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Mackenzie Foy, Ellen Burstyn, Anne Hathaway, Andrew Borba, Wes Bentley, William Devane, Michael Caine, David Gyasi, Josh Stewart, Casey Affleck, Timothée Chalamet, John Lithgow, David Oyelowo, Bill Irwin, Topher Grace, Matt Damon

OUR RATING: ★★★½

Story:

Sci-fi adventure directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Inspired by the theories of Caltech astrophysicist Kip Thorne, Interstellar (2014) is set in the not too distant future where Earth has been ravaged by an environmental disaster known as the Blight forcing humanity to focus on basic survival. We follow former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who is a widowed father of two, Murph and Tom (Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck), and is now a corn farmer. But when Cooper is seemingly accidentally reunited with an old colleague, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), he is offered the chance to help save humanity by leaving his family behind and setting out on an uncertain journey into space to find a new planet for humans to inhabit.

Our Favorite Quotes:

'We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.' - Cooper (Interstellar) Click To Tweet 'Murphy's Law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. What it means is, whatever can happen, will happen.' - Cooper (Interstellar) Click To Tweet

Best Quotes

Older Murph: My dad was a farmer. Like everybody else back then. Of course he didn’t start that way.

Young Murph: I thought you were the ghost.
Cooper: There’s no such thing as a ghost, babe.
Young Murph: Grandpa says that you can get ghosts.
Cooper: No, babe, that’s because grandpa’s a little too close to being one himself.

Cooper: Get the patch kit.
Young Tom: How am I supposed to patch it out here?
Cooper: You’ll have to figure it out. I’m not always going to be here to help you.

Cooper: What’s going on, Murph?
Young Murph: Why did you and mom name me after something that’s bad?
Cooper: Well, we didn’t?
Young Murph: Murphy’s Law?
Cooper: Murphy’s Law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. What it means is, whatever can happen, will happen. And that sounded just fine with us.

Young Tom: [referring to the drone] How long do you think it’s been up there?
Cooper: The Delhi Mission Control went down same as ours, ten years ago.
Young Tom: So for ten years? Why did it come down so low?
Cooper: I don’t know. Maybe the sun cooked it’s brain or it was looking for something.

Young Murph: [referring to the drone] What are you going to do with it?
Cooper: I’m going to give it something socially responsible to do, like drive a combine.
Young Murph: Can’t we just let it go? It wasn’t hurting anybody.
Cooper: Listen, this thing needs to learn how to adapt, Murph, like the rest of us.

Young Murph: There’s nothing special about which book. I’ve been working on it, like you said. I counted the spaces.
Cooper: Why?
Young Murph: In case the ghost is trying to communicate. I’m trying Morse.
Cooper: Morse?
Young Murph: Yeah, dots and dashes. It’s…
Cooper: Yeah, I know what Morse code is, Murph. I just don’t think your bookshelf is trying to talk to you.

Donald: When I was a kid, it felt like they made something new every day. Some gadget or idea. Like every day was Christmas. By six billion people, just try to imagine that. And every last one of them trying to have it all. This world isn’t so bad. And Tom will do just fine. You’re the one who doesn’t belong. Born forty years too late or forty years too early. My daughter knew it, God bless her. And your kids know it, especially Murph.
Cooper: Well, we used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.
Donald: Cooper, you were good at something and you never got a chance to do anything with it. I’m sorry.

Cooper: [to young Murph] It’s not a ghost. It’s gravity.

Cooper: It’s not Morse, Murph, it’s binary. Thick is one, thin is zero. Coordinates. That’s it.

TARS: Where did you find those coordinates?
Cooper: Unless you want to end up as my second lawnmower, no, I think I’ll turn you into a valve of a vacuum cleaner.
Brand: No, you won’t.

Cooper: Who are you?
Brand: Dr. Brand.
Cooper: Yeah, I knew a Dr. Brand once, he was a Professor.
Brand: What makes you think I’m not?
Cooper: Wasn’t near as cute either.

Williams: Explain to me how you found this facility.
Cooper: Kind of accidentally stumbled upon it. We were on a salvage run and we came across…
Williams: You’re sitting in the best kept secret in the world. Nobody stumbles in here, nobody stumbles out.
Professor Brand: Cooper, please, cooperate with these people.
Cooper: Look, it’s kind of hard to explain. Now, we learnt these coordinates from an anomaly.
Doyle: What sort of anomaly?
Cooper: Well, I hesitate to term it supernatural, but it damn well wasn’t scientific.
Williams: You’re going to have to be specific, Mr. Cooper, right now.
Young Murph: It was gravity.

'Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic, nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.' - TARS (Interstellar) Click To Tweet

Professor Brand: Don’t you know who we are, Coop?
Cooper: No, Professor, I don’t.
Brand: You know my father Professor Brand. We’re NASA.
Cooper: NASA.
Professor Brand: NASA. The same NASA you flew for.

Cooper: I heard they shut you down, sir, for refusing to drop bombs from the stratosphere on the starving people.
Professor Brand: Well when they realized that killing other people was not a long term solution, then they needed us back, in secret.
Cooper: Why secret?
Professor Brand: Because public opinion wouldn’t allow spending on space exploration. Not when you’re struggling to put food on the table. Blight. Wheat, seven years ago. Okra, this year. Now, there’s just corn.
Cooper: Well we’re growing more than we ever had.
Professor Brand: But like the potatoes in Ireland and the wheat in the dust bowl, the corn will die. Soon.

Cooper: We’ll find a way, Professor, we always have.
Professor Brand: Driven by the unshakable faith that the Earth is ours?
Cooper: Well not just ours, no. But it is our home.
Professor Brand: Earth’s atmosphere is eighty percent nitrogen. We don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen. The last people to starve, will be the first to suffocate. And your daughter’s generation will be the last to survive on Earth.

Professor Brand: We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.
Cooper: Rangers.
Professor Brand: The last components of our one versatile ship in orbit, The Endurance. Our final expedition.
Cooper: You sent people out there looking for a new home?
Professor Brand: The Lazarus missions.
Cooper: That sounds cheerful.

Professor Brand: Lazarus came back from the dead.
Cooper: Sure, but he had to die in the first place. There’s not a planet in our solar system that could sustain life and the nearest star is over a thousand years away. I mean, it doesn’t even qualify as futile. Where did you send them?
Professor Brand: Cooper, I can’t tell you any more unless you agree to pilot this craft. You’re the best pilot we ever had.
Cooper: I barely left the stratosphere.
Professor Brand: This team never left the simulator.

Professor Brand: We need a pilot, and this is the mission that you were trained for.
Cooper: What, without even knowing it? An hour ago you didn’t even know I was alive, and you were going anyway.
Professor Brand: We had no choice. But something sent you here, they chose you.
Cooper: Who’s “they”?

Cooper: How long would I be gone?
Professor Brand: Hard to know. Years.
Cooper: I’ve got kids, Professor.
Professor Brand: Get out there and save them.
Cooper: Who’s “they”?

Romilly: We started detecting gravitational anomalies almost fifty years ago. Mostly small distortions to our instruments in the upper atmosphere. In fact I believe you encountered one yourself.
Cooper: Yeah, in the Straits. My crash, something tripped my fly-by-wire.
Romilly: Exactly. But of all these anomalies, the most significant is this.
[he shows them an image of Saturn surrounded by a wormhole on the large screen]

Romilly: Out near Saturn, a disturbance of space-time.
Cooper: Is that a wormhole?
Romilly: It appeared forty-eight years ago.
Cooper: And it leads, where?
Professor Brand: Another galaxy.
Cooper: A wormhole is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Brand: Someone placed it there.
Cooper: “They”?
Brand: And whoever they are, they appear to be looking out for us. That wormhole lets us travel to other stars. It came right as when we needed it.

Doyle: They’ve put potentially habitable worlds right within our reach. Twelve, in fact from our initial probes.
Cooper: You sent probes into that?
Professor Brand: We sent people into it, ten years ago.
Cooper: The Lazarus missions.

'Our survival instinct is our single greatest source of inspiration.' - Dr. Mann (Interstellar) Click To Tweet

Professor Brand: Twelve possible worlds, twelve Ranger launches carrying the bravest humans ever to live. Led by the remarkable Dr. Mann.
Doyle: Each person’s landing pod had enough life support for two years. But they can use hibernation to stretch that making observations on organics over a decade or more. Their mission was to a**ess their world and if it showed potential, then they could send out a signal and bed down for the long nap, wait to be rescued.
Cooper: And what if the world didn’t show promise?
Doyle: Hence the bravery.

Cooper: You don’t have the resources to visit all twelve.
Doyle: No. Data transmission back through the wormhole is rudimentary. Simple binary pings on an annual basis give us some clue as to which worlds have potential. And one system shows promise.
Cooper: Well one, that’s a bit of a long shot isn’t it?
Brand: One system with three potential worlds? Not a long shot.
Cooper: Okay. So if we find a home, then what?
Professor Brand: That’s the long shot. There is a plan A, and a plan B. Did you notice anything strange about the launch chamber?

Cooper: This entire facility is a centrifuge. Some kind of vehicle? A space station?
Professor Brand: Both. Plan A.
Cooper: How do you get it off the ground?
Professor Brand: The first gravitational anomalies changed everything. Suddenly we knew that harnessing gravity was real. So I started working on a theory and we started building this station.
Cooper: But you haven’t solved it yet.
Brand: That’s why there’s plan B.

Brand: The problem is gravity. How to get a viable amount of human life off the planet? This is one way. Plan B: Population bomb. Over five thousand fertilized eggs weighing in at just under nine hundred kilos.
Cooper: Well how would you raise them?
Brand: With the equipment onboard we incubate the first ten. After that, with surrogacy the growth becomes exponential. Within thirty years we could have a colony of hundreds. The real difficulty with colonization is genetic diversity.
Brand: [referring to the vial] This takes care of that.
Cooper: Yeah, but what about the people here? You just, you’d give up on them? My kids?
Professor Brand: That’s why Plan A is a lot more fun.

Cooper: How far have you got?
Professor Brand: Almost there.
Cooper: You’re asking me to hang everything on an “almost”.
Professor Brand: I’m asking you to trust me. Find us a new home, and by the time you return, I would’ve solved the problem of gravity. I give you my word.

See more Interstellar Quotes

Young Murph: Go away!
Cooper: Murph.
Young Murph: Go! If you’re leaving just go!

Donald: This world was never enough for you, was it, Coop?
Cooper: What, because heading out there is what I feel like I was born to do? It excites me? No, that does not make it wrong.
Donald: It might. Don’t trust the right thing done for the wrong reason. The why of the thing, that’s the foundation.
Cooper: And the foundation’s solid. We farmers, we sit here every year when the rains fail, and we say, “Next year.” Well, next year ain’t going to save us, nor the one after that. This world’s a treasure, Donald, but it’s been telling us to leave for a while now. Mankind was born on Earth, it was never meant to die here.

Donald: Tom will be alright, but you got to make things right with Murph.
Cooper: I will.
Donald: Without making promises you don’t know you can keep.

Cooper: You have to talk to me, Murph. I need to fix this before I go.
Young Murph: Then I’ll keep it broken so you’ll have to stay.
Cooper: After you kids came along, your mom, she said something to me I never quite understood. She said now, we’re just here to be memories for our kids. I think I now understand what she meant. Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.
Young Murph: You said ghosts didn’t exist.
Cooper: That’s right, Murph.

Cooper: I can’t be your ghost right now. I need to exist. They chose me. Murph, they chose me. You saw it, you’re the one who led me to them.
Young Murph: That’s exactly why you can’t go! I figured out the message. One word. Know what it is?
Cooper: Murph.
Young Murph: “Stay.” It says “stay”, dad.
Cooper: Murph.
Young Murph: You don’t believe me. Look at the books! Look at this! It says stay!

Cooper: I’m coming back.
Young Murph: When?
Cooper: [referring to the watches] One for you. One for me. When I’m up there in hypersleep, or traveling in the speed of light, or near a black hole, time is going to change for me. And it’s going to run more slowly. Now, when we get back, we’re going to compare.

Young Murph: Time will run differently for us?
Cooper: Yeah. Maybe by the time I get back, you and I, we might be the same age. You and me. What? Imagine that!

Young Murph: [as she throws the watch aside] You have no idea when you’re coming back. No idea at all!
Cooper: Murph. Murph, don’t. Don’t make me leave like this. Come on, Murph! Don’t make me leave like this, Murph. Hey, I love you. Forever. You hear me? I love you forever. And I’m coming back. I’m coming back.

TARS: Areas, mark one. Everybody good? Plenty of slaves for my robot colony?
Doyle: They gave him a humor setting so he’d fit in better with his unit. He thinks it relaxes us.
Cooper: A giant sarcastic robot. What a great idea!
TARS: I have a cue light I can use when I’m joking, if you’d like?
Cooper: That would probably help.
TARS: Yeah, you could use it to find your way back into the ship after I blow you out the air lock.

Cooper: What’s your humor setting, TARS?
TARS: That’s one hundred percent
Cooper: Bring it on down to seventy-five, please.

Cooper: It’s hard leaving everything. My kids. Your father.
Brand: We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.
Cooper: We should learn to talk.
Brand: And when not to. Just being honest.
Cooper: Well, you don’t need to be that honest.

Cooper: Hey, TARS, what’s your honesty parameter?
TARS: Ninety percent.
Cooper: Ninety percent?
TARS: Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic, nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.
Cooper: Okay. Ninety percent it is, Dr. Brand.

Cooper: Look after my family will you please, sir?
Professor Brand: We’ll be waiting for you when you get back. A little older, a little wiser, but happy to see you.

Professor Brand: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right. Because their words had forked no lightning they do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Cooper: So alone.
Brand: We have each other. Dr. Mann had it worse.
Cooper: No, I mean them. It’s a perfect planet and we’re not going to find another one like it.
Brand: No, it’s not like looking for a new condo. The human race is going to be adrift. Desperate for a rock it can cling to while it catches its breath. We need to find that rock, and our three prospects are at the edge of what might sustain human life. Laura Miller’s planet is the first. Laura started our biology program.

Brand: Dr. Mann, well, he’s remarkable. He’s the best of us. He inspired eleven people to follow him on the loneliest journey in human history. Scientists, explorers. That’s what I love. You know out there, we face great odds. Death. But, not evil.
Cooper: You don’t think nature can be evil?
Brand: No. Formidable, frightening. But, no, not evil. Well is a lion evil because it rips a gazelle to shreds?
Cooper: Just what we take with us then?
Brand: Yeah. This crew represents the best of humanity.
Cooper: Even me, huh?
Brand: You know what, we agreed ninety percent.

Brand: Don’t stay up.
Cooper: I’ll be a minute.
Brand: Well, just remember, Coop, you’re literally wasting your breath.

Cooper: Dr. Brand and Edmunds, they close?
TARS: I wouldn’t know.
Cooper: Is that ninety percent wouldn’t know or ten percent wouldn’t know?
TARS: I also have a discretion setting, Cooper.
Cooper: Oh. But not a poker-face, slick.

Professor Brand: Murph is a bright spark. Maybe, I should fan the flame.
Donald: She’s already making fools of her teachers. Well, maybe she can come and make a fool out of you.

Romilly: That’s it! That’s the wormhole!
Cooper: Say it, don’t spray it, Rom. It’s a sphere.
Romilly: Well of course it is. What, you thought it would just be a hole?
Cooper: No, it’s just that all the illustrations I’ve ever seen they…
Romilly: The illustrations. Let me show you how it works.

Romilly: [takes a piece of paper] So they say you want to go from here, to there.
Romilly: [marks a cross at the top and at the bottom of the page] But this is too far. So a wormhole bends space like this.
Romilly: [bends the paper so the two marked crosses meet and pierces a hole through it] So you can take a shortcut through a higher dimension. Okay. So to show that they’ve turned three dimensional space into two dimensions, which turns a wormhole into two dimensions, a circle.

Romilly: What’s a circle in three dimensions?
Cooper: A sphere.
Romilly: Exactly. A spherical hole. But who put it there? Who do we have to thank?
Cooper: Well, I’m not thanking anybody until we get out of here in one piece, Rom.

Cooper: [as they’re about to go through the wormhole] Everybody ready to say goodbye to our solar system?
Romilly: To our galaxy.
Cooper: Here we go.

Doyle: [as they begin soar through the wormhole, to Cooper] The controls won’t work here. We’re passing through the bulk. It’s space beyond our three dimensions. All you can do is record and observe.

Romilly: [as they’re traveling through the wormhole Brand notices something to her side] What is that?
Brand: I think it’s them.
Romilly: Distorting space-time?

Romilly: [after they pass through the wormhole] What was that?
Brand: First handshake.
Doyle: We’re here.

Romilly: But there’s one complication. The planet is much closer to Gargantua than we thought.
Cooper: Gargantua?
Doyle: It’s what we’re calling the black hole. Miller’s and Dr. Mann’s planets both orbit it.
Brand: And Miller’s is on the horizon?
Romilly: Like a basketball around a hoop. Landing there takes us dangerously close and a black hole that big has a huge gravitational pull.

Cooper: Look, I could swing around that neutron star and…
Brand: No, no, no. It’s not that, it’s time. The gravity on that planet will slow our clock compared to Earth’s, drastically.
Cooper: Well how bad?
Romilly: Well, every hour we spend on that planet will be seven years back on Earth.
Cooper: Jesus.
Romilly: Well that’s relativity, folks.

Doyle: You can’t just think about your family now, you have to think bigger than that, alright?
Cooper: I’m thinking about my family and millions of other families. Okay, Plan A does not work if the people on Earth are dead by the time we pull it off.
Doyle: No, it doesn’t. That’s why there’s a Plan B.

Cooper: Here’s Gargantua, here’s Miller’s planet. Instead of taking the Endurance into orbit around Miller’s planet, which would conserve fuel, but we’d lose a lot of time. What if we take a wider orbit around Gargantua, parallel with Miller’s planet outside of its time shift, to here? Then we take the Ranger down, we get Miller, we get her samples, we’d come back, we analyze, we debrief. We’re in, we’re out, we lose a little fuel, but we save a lot of time.
Brand: That’ll work.
Romilly: That’s good.

Cooper: There’s not going to be time for monkey business or chit-chat down there, so TARS, you should definitely stay here. CASE, you’re with me. Anyone else can stay.
Romilly: If we’re talking about a couple of years, I could use the time to research gravity, observations from the wormhole, that’s gold to Professor Brand.
Cooper: TARS, factor an orbit around Gargantua, conserve fuel, minimize thrusting. And make sure we stay in range from Miller’s planet. You got it?
TARS: I wouldn’t leave you behind, Dr. Brand.

Cooper: You ready, CASE?
CASE: Yep.
Cooper: You don’t say much, do you?
CASE: TARS talks plenty for both of us.

Cooper: Romilly, are you reading these forces?
Romilly: [over radio] Unbelievable.
Doyle: A literal heart of darkness.

Romilly: If we could just see the collapsed star inside, the singularity, we’d solve gravity.
Cooper: We can’t get anything from it?
Romilly: Nothing escapes that horizon, not even light. All the answers are there, just no way to see it.
Brand: There’s Miller’s planet.
Romilly: Goodbye, Ranger.

Brand: I told you to leave me!
Cooper: And I told you to get your a** back here!
Brand: Why didn’t you leave me?!
Cooper: The difference is one of us was thinking about the mission!
Brand: You were thinking about getting home! I was trying to do the right thing!
Cooper: Can you tell that to Doyle?

Cooper: CASE, how much time?
CASE: Forty-five to an hour.
Cooper: The stuff of life, huh? What’s this going to cost us, Brand?
Brand: A lot. Decades.

Cooper: What happened to Miller?
Brand: Judging by the wreckage she was broken up by a wave soon after impact.
Cooper: How’s the wreckage stayed together after all these years, huh?
Brand: Because of the time slippage. On this planet’s time she only just landed hours ago. She probably just died minutes ago.
CASE: The data Doyle received was just the initial status echoing endlessly.

Cooper: Oh, we are not prepared for this. You eggheads have the survival skills of a boy-scout troop.
Brand: Well we got this far on our brains, further than any human in history.
Cooper: Well not far enough! And now we’re stuck here till there won’t be anyone left on Earth to save.
Brand: I’m counting every minute same as you, Cooper.

Cooper: Is there any possibility, I don’t know, maybe some way we could jump in a black hole and gain back the years? Don’t shake your head at me.
Brand: Time is relative, okay? It can stretch and it can squeeze, but, it can’t run backwards! Just can’t. The only thing that can move across dimensions, like time, is gravity.
Cooper: Okay. The beings that led us here, they communicate through gravity, right?
Brand: Yes.
Cooper: Could they be talking to us from the future?
Brand: Maybe.

Brand: They are beings of five dimensions. Right, to them, time might be another physical dimension. To them, the past might be a canyon that they can climb into, and the future, a mountain that they can climb up, but to us, it’s not. Okay? Look, Cooper, I screwed up. I’m sorry. But you knew about relativity.

Cooper: Brand. My daughter is ten years old. Couldn’t teach her Einstein’s theories before I left.
Brand: Couldn’t you have told her you were going to save the world?
Cooper: No. When you become a parent, one thing becomes really clear. And that is that you want to make sure your children feel safe. And it rules out telling a ten year old that the world’s ending.

Brand: Hello, Rom.
Romilly: I’ve waited years.
Cooper: How many, how many years?
Romilly: By now it must be twenty-three years, four months, eight days.

Brand: I thought I was prepared, I knew the theory. Reality is different.
Romilly: And Miller?
Brand: There’s nothing here for us.

Brand: Why didn’t you sleep?
Romilly: Oh, I had a couple of stretches. I stopped believing you were coming back. Something seemed wrong about dreaming my life away. I learned what I could from the black hole, but I couldn’t send anything to your father. We’ve been receiving but nothing gets out.
Brand: Is he alive?
Romilly: Oh, yeah.
Brand: Yeah?
Romilly: Yeah. We’ve got years of messages stored.

Tom: [as Cooper watches the video messages left for him over the years] Sorry, it’s been a while. Just, what with Jesse and all. Grandpa died last week. We buried him out in the back plot next to mom, and Jesse. Which is where we would’ve buried you if you’d ever come back. Murph was there at the funeral. We don’t see her that much, but she came for that.

Tom: [as Cooper continues to watch his vidoe messages] You’re not listening to this, I know that. All these messages are just drifting out there in the darkness. Lois says that I have to let you go. And so, I guess, I’ll let you go. I don’t know where you are, Dad. But I hope that you’re at peace. And, goodbye.

Murph: [as Cooper continues to watch his vidoe messages] You son of a b**ch. I never made one of these when you were still responding because I was so mad at you for leaving. And then when you went quiet, I feel like I should’ve lived with that decision, and I have. But today is my birthday. And it’s a special one, because you told me, you once told me that when you come back we might be the same age. And today I’m the age you were when you left. So it would be a real good time for you to come back.

Professor Brand: I know they’re still out there.
Murph: I know.
Professor Brand: There are so many reasons their communications might not be getting through.
Murph: I know, Professor.
Professor Brand: I’m not sure what I’m more afraid of. Them never coming back or coming back to find we’ve failed.
Murph: Then let’s succeed.

Professor Brand: So, back to the fourth iteration. Let’s run it through some new fields.
Murph: With respect, Professor, we’ve tried that hundreds of times.
Professor Brand: It only has to work once, Murph.

Professor Brand: Every rivet that they strike could’ve been a bullet. We’ve done well, in the world here, whether or not we crack the equation, before I kick the bucket.
Murph: Don’t be morbid, Professor.
Professor Brand: I’m not afraid of death. I am an old physicist. I’m afraid of time.

Murph: Time. You’re afraid of time. For years we’ve been trying to solve the equation without changing the underlying assumption about time.
Professor Brand: And?
Murph: And it means each iteration is an attempt to prove its own proof, it’s recursive it’s nonsensical.
Professor Brand: Are you calling my life’s work nonsense, Murph?
Murph: No, I’m saying that you’ve been trying to finish it with one arm, no, with both arms tied behind your back. And I don’t understand why.
Professor Brand: I am an old man, Murph. Can we take this point up at another time? I want to talk to my daughter.

Professor Brand: [as Brand watches a message from her father] Stepping out into the universe, we must confront the reality of interstellar travel. We must reach far beyond our own lifespans. We must think, not as individuals, but as a species. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Brand: Cooper, this is my field. And I really believe Edmund’s is the better prospect.
Cooper: Why?
Brand: Gargantua, that’s why. Look at Miller’s planet. Hydrocarbons, organics, yes; But no life. Sterile. We’ll find the same thing on Mann’s.
Romilly: Because of the black hole?
Brand: Murphy’s Law. Whatever can happen, will happen. Accidents are the first building block of evolution, but when you’re orbiting a black hole, not enough can happen, it sucks in asteroids and comets, other events which would otherwise reach you. We need to go further afield.

Cooper: You once said that Dr. Mann was the best of us.
Brand: He’s remarkable. We’re only here because of him.
Cooper: And yet here he is, he’s on the ground, and he’s sending a very unambiguous message, telling us to come to his planet.
Brand: Granted. But Edmund’s data is more promising.

Romilly: We should vote.
Cooper: Well, if we’re going to vote, there’s something you should know. Brand, he has a right to know.
Brand: That has nothing to do with it.
Romilly: What does?
Cooper: She’s in love with Wolf Edmunds.
Romilly: Is that true?
Brand: Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.

Cooper: You’re a scientist, Brand.
Brand: So listen to me, when I say that love isn’t something we invented, it’s observable, powerful. It has to mean something.
Cooper: Love has meaning, yes, social utility, social bonding, child rearing.
Brand: We love people who have died, where’s the social utility in that?
Cooper: None.
Brand: But maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade. Who, I know, is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it yet.

Brand: Alright, Cooper. Yes! The tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Cooper: Honestly, Amelia, it might.

Cooper: Amelia, I’m sorry.
Brand: You’re just being objective. Unless you’re punishing me for screwing up on Miller’s planet,
Cooper: You know this wasn’t a personal decision.
Brand: Well, if you’re wrong, you have a very personal decision to make. Your fuel calculations are based on a return journey. Strike out Mann’s planet and we’ll have to decide whether to return home, or push onto Edmonds with Plan B. Starting a colony could save us from extinction. You might have to decide between seeing your children again or the future of the human race. I trust you’ll be as objective then.

Professor Brand: I think I’ve let you all down.
Murph: No, you got us so far. We’re close. I’ll finish what you started.
Professor Brand: Good, good, Murph. You had faith. All those, all those years, I asked you to have faith. I wanted you to believe that your father would come back.
Murph: I do, Professor.

Professor Brand: Forgive me, Murph.
Murph: There’s nothing to forgive.
Professor Brand: I lied, Murph. I lied to you. There was no need for him to come back. There’s no way to help us.
Murph: But Plan A? All this? All these people? And the equation? Did my father know? Did he leave me?
Professor Brand: “Do not go gentle…”
Murph: No. No! You can’t leave. No!

Murph: Dr. Brand, I’m sorry to tell you that your father died today. He had no pain. He was at peace. I’m very sorry for your loss. Brand, did you know? He told you, right? You knew. This was all a sham. You left us here. To suffocate. To starve.

Dr. Mann: Pray you never learn just how good it can be to see another face. I hadn’t had a lot of hope to begin with. After so long I had none. My supplies were completely exhausted. The last time I went to sleep I didn’t even set up a waking date. You have literally raised me from the dead.
Cooper: Lazarus.
Dr. Mann: What about the others?
Romilly: I’m afraid you’re it, sir.
Dr. Mann: So far, surely.
Cooper: No. In our present situation there’s very little chance of rescuing any others.

Brand: Dr. Mann. Dr. Mann, tell us about your world.
Dr. Mann: Our world, we hope. Our world, it’s cold, stark, but undeniably beautiful. The days are sixty-seven hours long, cold. The nights are sixty-seven far colder hours. The gravity is a very, very pleasant eighty percent of the Earth. Now up here, where I landed, the water is alkali and the air has too much ammonia to breathe for more than just a few minutes. But down at the surface, and there is a surface, the chlorine dissipates, the ammonia gives way to crystalline hydrocarbons. Breathable air, to organics. Possibly even to life. We might be sharing this world.

TARS: [referring KIPP] What went wrong with him, sir?
Dr. Mann: Degeneration. He misidentified the first organics we found as ammonia crystals. We struggled on for a time, but ultimately I decommissioned him, used his power source to keep the mission going. I thought I was alone before I even shut him down.
TARS: Would you like me to take a look at him?
Dr. Mann: No, no. He needs a human touch.

Murph: [as Brand and Cooper are watching the message] Brand, did you know? He told you, right? You knew. This was all a sham. You left us here. To suffocate. To starve. Did my father know too? Dad! I just want to know if you left me here to die? I just have to know!

Brand: Cooper, my father dedicated his whole life to plan A, I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Dr. Mann: I do.
Cooper: He never even hoped to get the people off the Earth?
Dr. Mann: No.
Brand: But he has been trying to solve the gravity equation for forty years.

Dr. Mann: Amelia, your father solved his equation before I even left.
Brand: Then why wouldn’t he use it?
Dr. Mann: The equation couldn’t reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics. You need more.
Cooper: More? More what?
Dr. Mann: More data. You need to see into a black hole. The laws of nature prohibit a naked singularity.
Cooper: Romilly, is that true?
Romilly: If a black hole is an oyster then the singularity is the pearl inside. The gravity is so strong it’s always hidden in darkness, beyond the horizon. That’s why we call it a black hole.
Cooper: Okay, if we see beyond the horizon.
Romilly: We can’t, Coop.
Dr. Mann: There are some things that aren’t meant to be known.

Dr. Mann: Your father had to find another way to save the human race from extinction. Plan B, a colony.
Brand: But the people? Why keep building those stations?
Dr. Mann: Because he knew how hard it would be to get people to work together to save the species instead of themselves. Or their children.
Cooper: Bullshit.
Dr. Mann: You never would have come here unless you believed you were going to save them. Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier. We can care deeply, selflessly about those we know. But that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.

Brand: But the lie? That monstrous lie?
Dr. Mann: Unforgivable. And he knew that. He was prepared to destroy his own humanity in order to save the species. He made an incredible sacrifice.
Cooper: No! No, an incredible sacrifice is being made by the people on Earth who are going to die! Because in his fucking arrogance he declared their case hopeless.
Dr. Mann: I’m sorry, Cooper. Their case is hopeless.
Cooper: No. No.
Dr. Mann: We are the future.
Brand: Cooper. Cooper, what I can do?
Cooper: Let me go home.

Getty: Murph, don’t people have the right to know?
Murph: Well, panic won’t help. We just have to keep working, same as ever.
Getty: Yeah, but isn’t that exactly what Professor Brand was manipulating us to do…
Murph: Brand gave up on us. I’m still trying to solve this.
Getty: So, do you have an idea?
Murph: A feeling. I told you about my ghost. My dad thought I called it a ghost because I was scared of it. But I was never scared of it. I called it a ghost because it felt, it felt like a person. It was trying to tell me something. If there is an answer here on Earth, it’s back there, somehow in that room. So I have to find it. We’re running out of time.

Cooper: You would do this for us?
TARS: Before you get all teary, try to remember that as a robot I have to do anything you say.
Cooper: Your cue light’s broken.
TARS: I’m not joking!
[just then TARS turns on his cue light indicating he’s joking]

Cooper: Well, I have to tell you, Dr. Mann, I’m honored to be a part of this. But once we set up base camp, secure those modules, my work is done here. I’m going home.
Dr. Mann: You have attachments. But even without a family, I can promise you that, that yearning to be with other people is powerful. That emotion is at the foundation of what makes us human. It’s not to be taken lightly.

Dr. Mann: You know why we couldn’t just send machines on these missions, don’t you, Cooper? A machine doesn’t improvise well, because you can’t program the fear of death. Our survival instinct is our single greatest source of inspiration. Take you for example; father, with a survival instinct that extends to your kids. What does research tell us is the last thing you’re going to see before you die? Your children. Their faces. At the moment of death, your mind is going to push a little bit harder to survive. For them.

Dr. Mann: It’s funny. When I left Earth, I thought I was prepared to die. The truth is, I never really considered the possibility that my planet wasn’t the one. Nothing worked out the way it was supposed to.
Cooper: Let’s go.
[suddenly Mann removes Cooper’s emergency oxygen pack from his helmet and pushes Cooper down the hill]

Cooper: What are you doing?!
Dr. Mann: I’m sorry, I can’t let you leave with that ship. We’re going to need it to complete the mission. Once the others realize what this place isn’t, we cannot survive here! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

Cooper: You faked it, all the data.
Dr. Mann: Yes.
Cooper: There’s no surface.
Dr. Mann: No. I tried to do my duty, Cooper. But I knew, the day that I arrived here, this place had nothing and I resisted the temptation for years. But I knew that if I just pressed that button, then somebody would come and save me.
Cooper: You fucking coward.

Murph: Listen, if you’re not going to go, let your family go. Just let, save your family.
Tom: And we go live underground? With you? Pray that daddy comes to save us?
Murph: Dad’s not coming back. He never was coming back. It’s up to me!
Tom: Are you going to save everybody? Because dad couldn’t do it?
Murph: Dad didn’t even try! Dad just abandoned us! He left us here to die.
Tom: Nobody is going with you.
Murph: You’re going to wait for your next kid to die?
Tom: Get out, and don’t come back.

Cooper: Dr. Mann, there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re going to kill yourself!
Dr. Mann: Those are the best odds I’ve had in years! Don’t judge me, Cooper. You were never tested like I was. Few men have been.

Dr. Mann: You’re feeling it, aren’t you? The survival instinct. That’s what drove me. It’s what drives all of us, and it’s what’s going to save us. Because I want to save all of us. For you Cooper.

Dr. Mann:[as he watches Cooper continue to struggle to breath] I’m sorry, I can’t, I can’t watch you go through this. I’m sorry. I thought I could, but I can’t. I’m here, I’m here for you. Just listen to my voice Cooper, I’m right here. You’re not alone. Do you see your children? It’s okay. They are right there with you. Did Professor Brand tell you that poem before you left? Do you remember? “Do not go gentle, into that good night. Old age should burn, and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

TARS: Romilly did not survive. I could not save him.
CASE: TARS is in!
Cooper: I’ll take it from here. Do you have a fix on the Ranger?
CASE: [referring to Mann] He is pushing into orbit.
Cooper: Ah, if he takes control of that ship we’re dead.
Brand: He’d maroon us?
Cooper: Oh, he is marooning us!

Dr. Mann: This is not about my life, or Cooper’s life. This is about all mankind. There is a moment…
[suddenly as Mann opens the hatch he’s is pulled out and the Ranger explodes]

Brand: Cooper, what are you doing?
Cooper: Docking.
CASE: The Endurance rotation is 67, 68 rpm.
Cooper: Get it ready to match our spin with the retro thrusters.
CASE: It’s not possible.
Cooper: No, it’s necessary.

Cooper: I have a plan. We let Gargantua pull us down close to the horizon, and a powered slingshot around launching us towards Edmund’s planet.
Brand: Manually?
Cooper: That’s what I’m here for. I’ll take us just inside the critical orbit.
Brand: What about the time slippage?
Cooper: Well neither one of us have time to worry about relativity right now, Dr. Brand.
Brand: Sorry, Cooper.

Brand: Why does TARS have to detach?
Cooper: Well we have to shed the weight to escape gravity.
TARS: Newton’s third law. The only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere is to leave something behind.
Brand: Cooper, you can’t ask TARS to do this for us.
Cooper: He’s a robot, so you don’t have to ask him to do anything.

Brand: Cooper, you a**hole!
Cooper: Sorry, you broke up a little bit there.
TARS: It’s what we intended, Dr. Brand. It’s our only chance to save people on Earth. If I can find a way to transmit the quantum data I’ll find in there, they might still make it.
Brand: Let’s just hope there is still someone there to save.

Cooper: [watches through the bookcase as he sees himself saying goodbye to young Murph]Tell him Murph. Make him stay. Make him, make him stay, Murph. Make him stay, Murph! Don’t let me leave, Murph! Don’t, don’t let me leave, Murph!

Murph: [realizes it was Cooper that was the “ghost” in her room and gave her the message] It was you! You were my ghost.

Cooper: You survived?
TARS: Somewhere in their fifth dimension. They saved us!
Cooper: How? And who the hell is “they?” And why would they want to help us out?
TARS: I don’t know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five dimensional reality to allow you to understand it.
Cooper: Yeah, well it ain’t working.
TARS: Yes, it is. You’ve seen that time is represented here as a physical dimension. You’ve worked out that you can exert a force across space-time.
Cooper: Gravity, to send a message?
TARS: Affirmative.

Cooper: Gravity can cross the dimensions, including time.
TARS: Apparently.

Cooper: I can do this, I can do this.
TARS: But such complicated data to a child?
Cooper: Not just any child.

TARS: Even if you communicate it here, she won’t understand it’s significance for years!
Cooper: Yeah, I get that, TARS. But we, we’ve got to figure something out, alright? Or the people on Earth are going to die! Think, think, think!

TARS: They didn’t bring us here to change the past.
Cooper: No, they didn’t bring us here at all. We brought ourselves. TARS, give me the coordinates for NASA, in binary.
TARS: In binary, Roger. Transmitting data.

Murph: [remembers the day of the dust storm] It’s not a ghost. It’s gravity.

Cooper: Don’t you get it yet, TARS? I brought myself here! We’re here to communicate with the three dimensional world. We are the bridge! I thought they chose me. But they didn’t choose me, they chose her!
TARS: For what, Cooper?
Cooper: To save the world!

Cooper: All of this! In one little girl’s bedroom. Every moment, it’s infinitely complex. They have access to infinite time and space, but they’re not bound by anything! They can’t find a specific place in time! They can’t communicate. That’s why I’m here. I’m here to find a way to tell Murph, just like I found this moment.
TARS: How, Cooper?
Cooper: Love, TARS, love! It’s just like Brand said, my connection with Murph, it is quantifiable. It’s the key!
TARS: What are we here to do?
Cooper: Find how to tell her.

Cooper: The watch. The watch. That’s it! Encode the data into the movement of the second hand. TARS, translate the data into Morse and feed it to me.
TARS: Translating the data to Morse. Cooper, what if she never came back for it?
Cooper: She will. She will.

Murph: [referring to the second hand of her watch moving, to Tom] Look at this! It was him! All this time! I didn’t know it was him! Dad’s going to save us!

Cooper: Did it work?
TARS: I think it might have.
Cooper: How do you know?
TARS: Because, the bulk beings are closing the Tesseract.
Cooper: Don’t you get it yet, TARS? They’re not beings. They’re us! What I’ve been doing for Murph, they’ve been doing for me. For all of us.
TARS: Cooper, people couldn’t build this.
Cooper: No. No. Not yet. But one day. Not you and me. But a people. A civilization that’s evolved past the four dimensions that we know.

Doctor: [as Cooper wakes up in the hospital] Remember, you’re no spring chicken anymore. Actually you are one hundred and twenty-four years old. Take it slow, sir.

Cooper: Where am I?
Doctor: Cooper station. Currently orbiting Saturn.
Cooper: Cooper station. It was nice of you to name it after me.
Cooper: [as the nurse laughs] What?
Doctor: Well, the station isn’t named after you, sir. It’s named after your daughter. Although she’s always maintained just how important you were.

Cooper: [referring to Murph] Is she still alive?
Doctor: She’ll be here in a couple of weeks. She is far too old to be transferred from another station. But when she heard that you’d been found, well this is Murphy Cooper we’re talking about.
Cooper: Yes, it is.

Cooper: It was me, Murph. I was your ghost.
Older Murph: I know. People didn’t believe me, they thought that I was doing it all myself. But…
Older Murph: [points to the watch on her wrist] I knew who it was. Nobody believed me. But I knew you’d come back.
Cooper: How?
Older Murph: Because my dad promised me.

Cooper: I’m here now, Murph. I’m here.
Older Murph: No. No parent should have to watch their own child die. I have my kids here for me now. You can go.
Cooper: Where?
Older Murph: Brand. She’s out there. Setting up camp. Alone in a strange galaxy. Maybe right now she’s, settling in for the long nap. By the light of our new sun. In our new home.
[we see Cooper getting into a shuttle getting ready to leave and Brand at her camp where she’s putting Plan B into effect]

'Don't trust the right thing done for the wrong reason. The why of the thing, that's the foundation.' - Donald (Interstellar) Click To Tweet 'Newton's third law. The only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere is to leave something behind.' - TARS (Interstellar) Click To Tweet

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