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Home / Best Quotes / Tenet Best Quotes – ‘Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.’

Tenet Best Quotes – ‘Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.’

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Starring: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh

OUR RATING: ★★★★½

Story:

Sci-fi action thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist (John David Washington) journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

Read the movie review here.

Our Favorite Quotes:

'What's happened's happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It's not an excuse to do nothing.' - Neil (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Best Quotes


 

Protagonist: [undercover SWAT operation at a Ukrainian opera house] We live in a twilight world.
Well-Dressed Man: And there are no friends at dusk.
Protagonist: You’ve been made. This siege is a blind for them to vanish you.
Well-Dressed Man: But I established contact.
Protagonist: Bring you in or kill you. I have two minutes. Make up your mind.


 

SWAT: No friends at dusk, huh?
Protagonist: You’ll do. Get him to the rally point.


 

Protagonist: [referring to the bomb] Can you defuse that?
SWAT 2: It’s centrally synchronized. Are there more?
Protagonist: [nods] Covering their tracks.
SWAT 2: Taking out the audience?
Protagonist: They’re just the cheap seats.
SWAT: That’s not our mission!
Protagonist: Mine now.


 

Fay: [protagonist wakes after taking the cyanide pill] Welcome to the afterlife. You’ve been in a medically-induced coma while we got you out of Ukraine and rebuilt your mouth.
Protagonist: The suicide pills are fake. Why?
Fay: A test.
Protagonist: A test? They pulled my teeth out.


 

Protagonist: Somebody talked.
Fay: Not you. You chose to die instead of giving up your colleagues.


 

Fay: [to the protagonist] We all believe we’d run into the burning building. But until we feel that heat, we can never know. You do.


 

Protagonist: I resign.
Fay: You don’t work for us. You’re dead. Your duty transcends national interests. This is about survival.
Protagonist: Whose?
Fay: Everyone’s. There’s a cold war, cold as ice. To even know its true nature is to lose. This is knowledge divided. All I have for you is a gesture in combination with a word. Tenet. Use it carefully. It’ll open the right doors, but some of the wrong ones too.
Protagonist: That’s all they’ve told you?
Fay: That test you passed? Not everybody does.

 

'We all believe we'd run into the burning building. But until we feel that heat, we can never know.' - Fay (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Barbara: [catches the protagonist trying to open the doors to her lab] With a high-vis vest and a clipboard, you can get almost anywhere. Almost.
Protagonist: An obscure tenet.


 

Barbara: No small talk. Nothing that might reveal who we are, or what we do.
Protagonist: I thought I was here to find out what we do.
Barbara: You’re not here for “what”, you’re here for “how”. “What” is your department, and not my business.
Protagonist: Well, to do what I do, I need some idea of the threat we face.
Barbara: As I understand it, we’re trying to prevent World War III.
Protagonist: Nuclear holocaust?
Barbara: No. Something worse.


 

Barbara: One of these bullets is like us, traveling forwards through time. The other one’s going backwards. Can you tell which is which?
Barbara: [as one of the bullets is pulled up into her hand] How about now? It’s inverted. Its entropy runs backwards. So, to our eyes, its movement is reversed.


 

Protagonist: So where did it come from?
Barbara: Someone’s manufacturing them in the future. They’re streaming back at us. Try it. You have to have dropped it.
Protagonist: How can it move before I touch it?
Barbara: From your point of view, you caught it. But from the bullet’s point of view, you dropped it.
Protagonist: But cause comes before effect.
Barbara: No, that’s just the way we see time.


 

Protagonist: Well, what about free will?
Barbara: That bullet wouldn’t have moved if you hadn’t put your hand there. Either way we run the tape, you made it happen. Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.


 

Protagonist: Why does it feel so strange?
Barbara: You’re not shooting the bullet. You’re catching it.
Protagonist: Woh.

 

'It's hard to take things on trust from people speaking half-truths.' - Protagonist (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Protagonist: I’ve seen this type of ammunition before.
Barbara: In the field?
Protagonist: I was almost hit.
Barbara: Then you were exceedingly lucky. An inverted bullet passing through your body would be devastating. Not pretty.


 

Protagonist: [referring to the ammunition] These look like today’s.
Barbara: They may have been made today and inverted years from now.
Protagonist: Where did you get them?
Barbara: Came with the wall. I was assigned it, like all the material I’m studying here.


 

Protagonist: Look, I’m not seeing Armageddon here.
Barbara: The bullet may not seem like much, but it’s a simple machine. Lead bullet, brass casing, gunpowder. If they can invert that, I see no reason they couldn’t invert pretty much anything. Even a nuclear weapon can only affect our future. An inverted weapon might be able to affect our past as well.


 

Barbara: Now that we know what to look for, we’re finding more and more inverted material. Remnants of complex objects.
Protagonist: What do you think we’re seeing?
Barbara: The detritus of a coming war.


 

Neil: [ordering drinks] Vodka tonic. And a Diet Coke.
Protagonist: What?
Neil: You never drink on the job.
Protagonist: You’re well-informed.
Neil: Well, pays to be in our profession.
Protagonist: Well, I prefer soda water.
Neil: No, you don’t.

 

'Don't try to understand it. Feel it.' - Barbara (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Protagonist: Singh’s house isn’t tall enough to parachute off of.
Neil: It’s bungee jumpable.
Protagonist: I don’t think “bungee jumpable” is a word.
Neil: It may not be a word, but it may be our only way out of that place. Or into it, for that matter.


 

Sanjay: Look, my friend, guns are never conducive to a productive negotiation.
Protagonist: I’m not the man they send to negotiate. Or the man they send to make deals. But I am the man people talk to.


 

Protagonist: You’re an arms dealer, friend. This may be the easiest trigger I’ve ever had to pull.
Priya: To say anything about a client would violate the tenets he lives by.
Protagonist: If tenets are important to you, then you can tell me. Everything.
Priya: Not while you have a gun to my husband’s head.


 

Protagonist: This is your operation?
Priya: A masculine front in a man’s world has its uses.


 

Priya: [referring to Sator] When I sold him the rounds, they were perfectly ordinary.
Protagonist: So how did he get them inverted?
Priya: We believe he’s functioning as some sort of a broker. Between our time and the future.
Protagonist: He can communicate with the future?
Priya: We all do, don’t we? E-mails, credit cards, texts. Anything that goes into the record speaks directly to the future. The question is, can the future speak back?

 

'The world will never know what could've happened. And even if they did, they wouldn't care. Because no one cares about the bomb that didn't go off. Only the one that did.' - Neil (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Priya: [to the protagonist] To get anywhere near Sator would take a fresh faced protagonist. And you are fresh as a daisy. Get close. Find out what he’s receiving and how.


 

Steward: May I help you, sir?
Protagonist: I’m Mr. Crosby’s lunch.
Steward: I presume you mean Sir Michael Crosby’s lunch.
Protagonist: Presume away.


 

Protagonist: Well, how do I get to Sator?
Crosby: [referring to Sator’s wife, Kat] Well, through her, of course.
Protagonist: You may have an inflated idea of my powers of seduction.
Crosby: Hardly. We have an ace in the hole.
Protagonist: You’re carrying a Goya in a Harrods bag.
Crosby: It’s a fake by a Spaniard named Arepo.


 

Crosby: Look, no offense, but in this world, when someone is claiming to be a billionaire, Brooks Brothers won’t cut it.
Protagonist: I’m assuming I’m on a budget.
Crosby: [gives the protagonist a credit card] Save the world, then we’ll balance the books. Can I recommend a tailor?
Protagonist: I’ll manage. You British don’t have a monopoly on snobbery, you know.
Crosby: Well, not a monopoly. More of a controlling interest.
Protagonist: [referring to his food] Could you box that up for me?
Steward: Certainly not.

 

'It's the bomb that didn't go off. The danger no one knew was real. That's the bomb with the real power to change the world.' - Neil (Tenet) Click To Tweet

 

Protagonist: [referring to Sator knowing the painting is fake] He knows? And he’s never done anything about it?
Kat: Why would he? He paid nine million for it. Barely cover the cost of the holiday he just forced us on.
Protagonist: Where did you go, Mars?
Kat: Vietnam, on our yacht. His yacht.

See more Tenet Quotes


 

Kat: You’ve got the suit. The shoes, the watch. Think you’re a little out of your depth.
Protagonist: People who’ve amassed fortunes, like your husband’s, generally aren’t okay with being cheated out of any of it.
Kat: The drawing is his hold over me. He threatened me with police. Prison. The works. He controls me. My contact with my son. Everything. Leaving would never have been easy but now it’s impossible. You can’t fight. Just beg.


 

Kat: [referring to Sator] In Vietnam, I tried to love him again. Thought if there was love there, he might give me my son back. We sat on that bloody boat watching the sunsets, imitating some earlier time in our lives. He seemed happy, so I asked him. And he made me an offer. He’d let me go if I agreed never to see my son again. I expressed myself. I took Max ashore. He called us contrite.


 

Kat: And when we got back, I glimpsed some other woman diving off the boat, and he’d vanished. I never felt such envy.
Protagonist: You don’t seem the jealous type.
Kat: Of her freedom. You know how I dream of just diving off that boat?
Protagonist: But you share a son.
Kat: That’s my life now.


 

Protagonist: [referring to Sator] Did you know the drawing was a fake?
Kat: No. Tomas and I became close, maybe too close. I failed. Andrei can’t conceive of failure, only betrayal. But I didn’t betray my husband. Retrospect, maybe I missed my chance.
Protagonist: And he let Arepo walk free.
Kat: If you’d actually met Arepo as you claimed, you’d understand he no longer walks anywhere.
Protagonist: We spoke on the phone.
Kat: He can’t do that either.


 

Protagonist: Get me an introduction. I’ll take the drawing out of the equation. No picture, no prosecution, no more hold over you. I might just be your second chance.
Kat: No, I don’t need redemption.
Protagonist: At betrayal.


 

Protagonist: [as Sator’s men show up] You must’ve really not liked the look of me.
Kat: The look of you’s fine. It’s best to get to the nasty part before I care one way or the other.
Protagonist: There’s a number in your left coat pocket. Don’t call from home.
Kat: You won’t be taking my call.
Protagonist: I might surprise you.


 

Gaunt Russian: [referring to Sator] And he gets what he wants.
Kat: [they see the protagonist alive] Not always, apparently.


 

Neil: [referring breaking into the airport storage facility] So, how do we get enough firepower through the perimeter to trigger the lockdown procedure? Back wall of the Freeport.
Protagonist: You’ve got something?
Neil: You’re not going to like it.


 

Protagonist: You want to crash a plane?
Neil: Well, not from the air. Don’t be so dramatic. I want to run a jet off the taxiway, and breach the rear wall, and start a fire.
Protagonist: Well, how big a plane?
Neil: Well, that part is a little dramatic.


 

Protagonist: You want to crash a transport plane? What about the crew?
Mahir: Well, we pop the slides, chuck them off.
Protagonist: On the move?
Mahir: What’s the problem? They’ll be fine.
Protagonist: Well, it seems bold.
Mahir: Bold I’m fine with. I thought you were going to say nuts.
Protagonist: And if you get caught?
Mahir: We won’t.


 

Protagonist: [referring to the bullet holes in the glass] Don’t touch them!
Neil: What the hell happened here?
Protagonist: It hasn’t happened yet.
[suddenly two inverted masked men emerge the machine and attack them]


 

Neil: Well, I’ve seen too much. I’m still alive, which must mean you’ve decided to trust me.
Protagonist: Or maybe I lost my edge.
Neil: Edge is still intact.


 

Protagonist: There’s a cold war.
Neil: Nuclear?
Protagonist: Temporal.
Neil: Time travel?
Protagonist: No. Technology that can invert an object’s entropy.
Neil: You mean reverse chronology. Like Feynman and Wheeler’s notion that a positron is an electron moving backwards in time?
Protagonist: Sure, that’s exactly what I meant.
Neil: I have a master’s in physics.
Protagonist: Well, try and keep up.


 

Neil: Well, the implications of this are…
Protagonist: Beyond secret.
Neil: Then why did you bring me in?
Protagonist: I thought we’d find a drawing and a couple boxes of bullets.
Neil: Not as surprised as I was.


 

Protagonist: I’m going back to Mumbai to get some answers. I’ll set you up as a go-between. But remember, to you, it’s all about plutonium. And when we’re done, they’ll kill you.
Neil: Won’t you have to do that anyway?
Protagonist: I’d rather it be my decision.
Neil: So would I. I think.


 

Priya: What did you find in the vaults?
Protagonist: Two antagonists. One inverted. We took out the regular one, but the inverted one got away.
Priya: Both emerged at the same moment?
Protagonist: Yeah.
Priya: They were the same person.


 

Priya: Sator’s built a turnstile in that vault.
Protagonist: Turnstile?
Priya: A machine for inverting.
Protagonist: You’ve told me that technology hasn’t been invented yet.
Priya: It hasn’t. He’s been given it by the future.
Protagonist: For what?
Priya: You have the best chance of finding out.


 

Priya: A terrorist’s bomb, even one that can kill billions, is nothing compared with what will happen if we don’t stop Sator.
Protagonist: From doing what?
Priya: We are being attacked by the future. And Sator’s helping. You have to find out how.


 

Kat: He’ll think we’re having an affair.
Protagonist: Then he’ll want to meet me.
Kat: Or have you killed.
Protagonist: Let me worry about that.
Kat: Did I look worried?


 

Protagonist: [as one of Sator’s guards body searches him] Hey! Easy, fella. Where I’m from, you buy me dinner first.


 

Protagonist: Mr. Sator.
Sator: Don’t bother. Just tell me if you’ve slept with my wife yet.
Protagonist: No. Not yet.


 

Sator: How would you like to die?
Protagonist: Old.
Sator: You chose the wrong profession.


 

Sator: There’s a walled garden up the road. We are going to take you there, cut your throat. Not across. In the middle, like a hole. Then we take your balls, and we stuff them in the cut, block the windpipe.
Protagonist: Complex.
Sator: It’s very gratifying to watch a man you don’t like try to pull his own balls out of his throat before he chokes.
Protagonist: Is this how you treat all your guests?
Sator: We’re finished.


 

Sator: [to Kate, referring to the forged painting] Were you worried it had been destroyed? Rest assured, instinct told me to remove it from the vault. I’ve always had instincts about the future. That’s how I built this life you no longer value.


 

Protagonist: [after the protagonist saves Sator from drowning] I don’t know what you think your husband does.
Kat: Oh, we both know he’s an arms dealer.
Protagonist: He’s so much more.
Kat: What then?
Protagonist: Andrei Sator holds all of our lives in his hands, not just yours.


 

Protagonist: Trust me.
Kat: Save it. I’m not falling for it twice.
Protagonist: You have a better option?
Kat: Whatever it takes to get what you want. Not a second’s thought for me or my son. What do you think he’s going to do to me now?
Protagonist: [gives Kat a gun] Try not to use it. On anyone.


 

Sator: Drink with me. It seems I now owe you my life.
Protagonist: It’s nothing.
Sator: My life is not nothing. And I don’t like to be in debt.
Protagonist: Then pay me. No retribution against your wife.
Sator: You think she released my harness? It was my own mistake.


 

Sator: [referring to how he used to dig plutonium from his city, Stalsk 12] They needed people to find the plutonium. It became my first contract. Nobody else even bid. They thought it was a death sentence. But one man’s probability of death is another man’s possibility for a life. I staked my claim in the new Russia. Even now, my company is the only one to operate in the ruins.


 

Kat: Is fear and pain enough, Andrei? That’s all I have to offer you.
Sator: Well, that will have to do then.
Kat: Why didn’t you just let me go?
Sator: Because if I can’t have you, no one else can.
Kat: And if you touch me, I scream so loud he hears.
Sator: You think I let him interfere?
Kat: If he tried, you’d have to kill him. End of deal. So you leave me alone.


 

Sator: [after his men catch the protagonist spying] Who are you? How do you come by your information about the opera?
Protagonist: You wouldn’t do business with someone who wasn’t savvy enough to be recruited. Hell, the CIA provides two-thirds of the market for fissile material.
Sator: They’re usually buying, not selling. But we do live in a twilight world.
Protagonist: Is that Whitman? Pretty.
Sator: Next warning’s a bullet in the brain.
Protagonist: No balls in my throat?
Sator: There will be no time for such things in Tallinn.


 

Protagonist: [referring to how Sator gets the inverted materials] Dead drops. He buries his time capsule, transmits the location, then digs it up to collect the inverted materials they sent.
Neil: Seemingly instantaneous. Where does he bury it?
Protagonist: Some place that won’t be discovered for centuries.


 

Kat: [referring to the guns] What is this, Andrei?
Sator: You know perfectly well what it is, Kat. The filthy business that put those clothes on your back, and our boy in his school, that you thought you could negotiate your way around.


 

Sator: Look at me! And understand, you don’t negotiate with a tiger. You admire a tiger until he turns on you, and you feel its true f***ing nature!
Kat: [pulls out the gun the protagonist gave her and points it at him] You stay right there. Don’t. You stay right there.


 

Sator: You pushed me off a boat. You are not going to shoot me in cold blood.
Kat: My blood’s not cold, Andrei.
Sator: No, but you’re not angry enough. Because anger scars over into despair. I look in your eyes, I see despair.
[he suddenly takes the gun from her and hits her with it]


 

Neil: [referring to Sator’s voice over the radio] I can’t understand this.
Protagonist: You said you spoke Estonian.
Neil: It’s not Estonian. It’s backwards.


 

Neil: [as Sator wants the stolen object in exchange for Kat] Don’t give it to him.
Protagonist: This isn’t plutonium!
Neil: It’s worse than that, goddamn it!


 

Protagonist: [referring to Sator] Where did he go?
Ives: The past.


 

Protagonist: How did Sator know about the ambush?
Neil: It’s posterity. An ambush in the middle of the street can’t stay out of the records.
Protagonist: Bulls**t! He knew every move we made! Every one of them! Somebody talked! Who was it?
Neil: No. No.


 

Protagonist: At every stage, you’ve known too much. I’m going to ask you again. Did you talk?
Ives: Nobody talked. They’re running a temporal pincer movement.
Protagonist: A what?
Ives: The pincer movement. But not in space, in time. Half his team moves forward through the event. He monitors them, and then attacks at the end moving backwards, knowing everything.


 

Neil: [referring to the object] I told you it was what he was after. And you just told him where it was.
Protagonist: I lied.
Neil: Jesus. You lied about it?
Protagonist: He couldn’t verify inside the room. He’d have shot her anyway. Lying is standard operating procedure.


 

Protagonist: [referring to taking Kat to the past] I’m taking her through. I’m not going to let her die. I’ll take my chances.
Ives: There’s no way of bringing you back.
Protagonist: We find another machine.
Ives: A week ago? Where?
Protagonist: Oslo.
Ives: That facility’s inside an airport security perimeter. It’s impregnable.
Neil: It wasn’t last week.
Ives: We’re going in. You might as well help us.


 

Ives: This is a proving window. As you approach the turnstile, if you don’t see yourself in the proving window, do not enter the machine.
Protagonist: Why not?
Ives: If you don’t see yourself reverse exit a machine, then you ain’t getting out.
Protagonist: Is that going to work?
Ives: [they see themselves reversing into the machine] Yeah. See for yourself. There’s your answer. Let’s go.


 

Protagonist: Hey, Neil. Find a way to get us to Oslo. I’m going back out there.
Neil: To do what?
Protagonist: To stop Sator from getting away with whatever it is I just gave him.
Neil: You didn’t. You lied about where it was. Wait. You’re going out there for her.


 

Protagonist: He threatened to kill her in the past. If he does, what happens to her here?
Neil: That’s unknowable. If you’re there to make a change, you’re not here to observe its effect.
Protagonist: What do you believe?
Neil: What’s happened’s happened. We need to save her, here and now. If you go back out there, you might hand him exactly what he’s after.


 

Ives: This is cowboy s**t. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into if you go through that door.
Protagonist: Well, I’m going, so any tips would be welcome.


 

Wheeler: [inverted protagonist is preparing to go outside in the past] Number one rule, don’t come into contact with your forward self. It’s the whole point of these barriers and protective suits.
Protagonist: We don’t have time.
Wheeler: Well, if your particles come into contact…
Protagonist: What?
Wheeler: Annihilation.
Protagonist: That would be bad, right?


 

Protagonist: Can I drive a car?
Ives: Cowboy s**t.
Wheeler: I can’t vouch for the handling. Friction and wind resistance are reversed. You are inverted. The world is not.


 

Neil: [after the protagonist wakes from the fire Sator set to his car] Heat transfer was reversed. You might be the first case of hypothermia from a gasoline explosion in history.
Protagonist: At this point, nothing surprises.


 

Protagonist: He’s got the material, Neil. I handed it to him on a plate.
Neil: I warned you.
Protagonist: What’s happened’s happened. I get it now. But it’s hard to take things on trust from people speaking half-truths.
Neil: That’s not fair.
Protagonist: You were a part of this before we met.


 

Protagonist: Who recruited you, Neil?
Neil: It can’t possibly do you any good to know that right now. When this is over, if we’re still standing, and you still care, then you can hear my life story, okay?


 

Neil: By telling Kat anything, we’re compromising her in Priya’s eyes.
Protagonist: In Priya’s eyes, she’s already compromised. She has the right to know why she might die.
Kat: Am I going to die?
Protagonist: Not if we have something to say about it.
Neil: And we do.


 

Neil: [explaining the Algorithm] It’s a formula rendered into physical form, so it can’t be copied or communicated. It’s a black box with one function.
Protagonist: Which is?
Neil: Inversion. But not objects or peoples. The world around us.


 

Neil: As they invert the entropy of more and more objects, the two directions of time are becoming more intertwined. But because the environment essentially flows in our direction, we dominate. They’re always swimming upstream. It’s what saved your life. Inverted explosion was pushing against the environment.
Protagonist: Pi**ing in the wind.
Neil: And the algorithm can change the direction of that wind. It can invert the entropy of the world.
Kat: And if that happens?
Neil: Oh. End of play.
Protagonist: “End of play.” Can you be a little more precise?
Neil: Everyone and everything that’s ever lived, destroyed. Instantly. Precise enough?


 

Protagonist: I’ve been thinking. We’re their ancestors. If they destroy us, won’t that destroy them?
Neil: This brings us to the grandfather paradox.
Protagonist: The what?
Neil: If you went back in time and killed your own grandfather, how could you have been born to commit the act?
Protagonist: What’s the answer?
Neil: There’s no answer. It’s a paradox.


 

Neil: But in the future, those in power clearly believe that you can kick grandpa down the stairs, gouge his eyes out, slit his throat, without consequence.
Protagonist: Could they be right?
Neil: Doesn’t matter. They believe it. So they’re willing to destroy us.


 

Protagonist: This reversing the flow of time. Doesn’t us being here now mean it never happens? That we stop them?
Neil: Optimistically, I’d say that’s right.
Protagonist: Pessimistically?
Neil: In a parallel worlds theory, we can’t know the relationship between consciousness and multiple realities. Does your head hurt yet?
Protagonist: Yes.


 

Protagonist: [after he finds out he’d fought his inverted self back in the vault] You knew it was me coming out of that vault. Why didn’t you say?
Neil: That’s a lot of explaining when someone’s about to put a bullet in their own brain.
Protagonist: But afterwards?
Neil: Thing’s the same. I knew you’d be okay. What’s happened’s happened. If I told you and you acted differently, who knows? The policy is to suppress.
Protagonist: Whose policy?
Neil: Ours, my friend. We’re the people saving the world from what might’ve been.


 

Protagonist: [referring to Sator] I let him get ahold of the algorithm. So, tell me about it, Priya.
Priya: It’s unique. The scientist who built it took her own life so she couldn’t be forced to make another.
Protagonist: A scientist in the future?
Priya: Generations from now.


 

Protagonist: Why does she have to kill herself?
Priya: You’re familiar with the Manhattan Project? As they approached the first atomic test, Oppenheimer became concerned that the detonation might produce a chain reaction, engulfing the world.
Protagonist: They went ahead anyway and got lucky.
Priya: Think of our scientist as her generation’s Oppenheimer. She devises a method for inverting the world, but becomes convinced that by destroying us, they’re destroying themselves.
Protagonist: The grandfather paradox.
Priya: But, unlike Oppenheimer, she rebels, splitting the algorithm into nine sections and hiding them the best place she can think of.
Protagonist: The past. Here, now.


 

Protagonist: [after Priya confirms Sator has all nine sections] And that’s why you’re going to do things differently this time.
Priya: To change things? So Katherine won’t get hurt?
Protagonist: So Sator won’t get the algorithm.
Priya: If that universe can exist, we don’t live in it.
Protagonist: Well, let’s try.


 

Priya: Ignorance is our ammunition. If you had known what the algorithm was, would you have let it fall into Sator’s hands?
Protagonist: You want Sator to get the last section.
Priya: That is the only way he’ll bring together the other eight.
Protagonist: I was supposed to steal it, then lose it?
Priya: Mission accomplished.


 

Protagonist: You used me.
Priya: As you used Katherine. Standard operating procedure. You’ve done your part.
Protagonist: My part? I’m the protagonist of this operation.
Priya: You are a protagonist. Did you think you were the only one capable of saving the world?
Protagonist: No. But I am. Because I haven’t told you where he’s assembling the algorithm or when.
Priya: You’re about to.
Protagonist: No, I’m not.


 

Priya: [to protagonist] You have started looking at the world in a new way.


 

Protagonist: [referring to Kat] I need your word that she and her son will be safe, Priya.
Priya: What good is someone’s word in our line of business? They’ll be safe.


 

Protagonist: You have a turnstile?
Priya: The exact technology that we’re trying to suppress. Fighting fire with fire’s a treacherous business. But there are some people, in the future, who want to continue the
algorithm’s journey into the past. You see, Tenet wasn’t founded in the past. It will be founded in the future.


 

Kat: [referring to Sator] Tell me you’re going to kill him.
Protagonist: I can’t.
Kat: Why not? I bet you’ve probably killed a lot of people.
Neil: Not with a dead man’s switch.


 

Protagonist: His death activates the algorithm. He dies, the world ends. No one dares kill him.
Kat: No, you’ve missed the point. He’s intending to end his life.
Protagonist: Why?
Kat: He’s dying. Inoperable pancreatic cancer.
Protagonist: And he’s taking the world with him.
Kat: If he can’t have her, no one can.
Neil: He gets to choose the time and place for the end of the world. What moment? What does he choose?


 

Kat: [referring to their holiday in Vietnam] To go back to that golden moment and have it be his last.
Protagonist: Everyone’s last.


 

Neil: Where’s the dead drop?
Protagonist: Knowledge divided, my friend.
Neil: You’re not going to tell me?
Protagonist: Ignorance is our ammunition.


 

Kat: This is goodbye, isn’t it?
Protagonist: I’d like to say that you don’t have to do this, Kat.
Kat: Worst thing Andrei ever did to me was that offer he made me. Let me go if I agreed never to see my son again. I shouted and swore. But he’d seen it on my face, just for an instant. I considered it. I don’t know if I hate him more for what he’s done, or because he knows that about me. A chance to help save my child. You can’t know what that means to a mother.
Protagonist: No.


 

Kat: You’ve killed people you’ve hated before.
Protagonist: It’s not usually personal.
Kat: Well, he’s dying anyway. Maybe it doesn’t even count.
Protagonist: It always counts, Kat. You’re not there to kill him, you’re the backstop. If we don’t lift that algorithm, and he kills himself, he takes us all with him.
Kat: You just keep up your end, okay?


 

Protagonist: [referring to the phone] When it’s over, when you’re raising your boy, carry this. There may be a time and place you feel threatened. Hit “talk”, state your location, hang up.
Kat: Who gets the message?
Protagonist: Posterity.


 

Protagonist: I wanted to be on the first wave.
Ives: There is no first wave. Red Team and Blue Team operate simultaneously. Look, don’t get on the chopper if you can’t stop thinking in linear terms. Now, you want to be on the team that lifts the contents of the capsule?
Protagonist: Absolutely.
Ives: Yeah, that’s us. We’re splinter unit.
Protagonist: Just us?
Ives: No one who knows the contents of that capsule can leave the field. I thought we’d manage ourselves.


 

Sator: [after Kat inverts to go back to the day on their yacht in Vietnam] I borrowed it from the CIA.
Kat: [referring to the cyanide pill] What is it?
Sator: The way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Kat: I don’t understand.
Sator: When I take this, it’s all over.
Kat: Then don’t take it yet.


 

Sator: [over phone] How do you like where my journey began and yours ends?
Protagonist: Little radioactive for my taste.
Sator: My fate was always bound up with radiation.


 

Sator: I made a bargain with the devil. Money for time. We sold our futures.
Protagonist: And now you’re about to make the same mistake for the entire world.
Sator: It wasn’t a mistake. I made the bargain I could. What was yours? You fight for a cause you barely understand, with people you trust so little, you’ve told them nothing. When I die, the world dies with me. And your knowledge dies with you, buried in a tomb like an anonymous Egyptian builder, sealed in a pyramid to keep his secret. Your faith is blind. You’re a fanatic.


 

Protagonist: What’s more fanatical than trying to destroy the world?
Sator: I’m not, I’m creating a new one. Somewhere, sometime, a man in a crystalline tower throws a switch and Armageddon is both triggered and avoided. Now time itself switches direction. The same sunshine we basked in will warm the faces of our descendants generations to come.
Protagonist: How could they want to kill us?
Sator: Because their oceans rose and their rivers ran dry. Don’t you see? They have no choice but to turn back. We’re responsible.


 

Sator: Knowing this, do you still want me to stop?
Protagonist: Yes. Each generation looks out for its own survival.
Sator: That’s exactly what they’re doing.
Protagonist: But not you. You’re a traitor. Bringing death to all, because you have no life of your own left!
Sator: When I’m done, life continues.
Protagonist: Not your son’s.
Sator: My greatest sin was to bring a son into a world I knew was ending. You think God will forgive me?


 

Protagonist: You don’t believe in God, or a future, or anything outside of your own experience.
Sator: The rest is belief. And I don’t have it.
Protagonist: Without it, you’re not human. You’re just a madman.
Sator: Or a god, of sorts.
Protagonist: Like I said.


 

Sator: I’ll give your love to my wife.
Protagonist: You’re forgetting. I haven’t met her yet.
Sator: That’s right. After you meet her, she dies. I’ll just give her my love instead.


 

Kat: I can’t let you think you’ve won.
Sator: Don’t spoil this moment, Kat.
Kat: [points a gun at him] I’m not letting you go to your grave thinking we’re coming with you. You’re dying alone, Andrei.


 

Kat: Look in my eyes. Which do you see? Despair or anger? I’m not the woman who could find love for you, even though you scarred her on the inside. I’m the vengeful b**ch you scarred on the outside.
[reveals her bullet wound, as Sator realizes she’s from the future, she shoots him]


 

Protagonist: [over radio] Kat! You jumped the gun!
Kat: I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t let him die thinking he’d won. I knew you’d find a way. Wait, you found a way, we’re okay, right?
Protagonist: Yeah, found a way. Be safe.


 

Protagonist: I thought you were inverted.
Neil: I changed gears halfway. Looked like you needed help here.
Ives: Here? We needed help down there. How did you get that lock open?
Protagonist: It wasn’t me.


 

Protagonist: [as Ives takes the Algorithm and points his gun at him] No one who’s seen this leaves the field.
Ives: Alright. We hide it. We end our lives. That’s the only way to be sure. As to when?Maybe that’s every man’s decision to make for himself.
Neil: You’re not going to kill us?
Ives: If I ever find you, I will.
Neil: But you won’t look too hard?
Ives: Yes, I will.


 

Protagonist: [gives his part of the Algorithm to the protagonist] Are you really going back in?
Neil: I’m the only one who could’ve got that door open in time, right, Ives?
Protagonist: Well, I don’t know any locksmiths as good as you.
Neil: See? It’s me in there, again. Weaving another past in the fabric of this mission.


 

Neil: [after the protagonist realizes he’s the one who’s been helping him] Just saved the world. Can’t leave anything to chance.
Protagonist: But can we change things if we do it differently?
Neil: What’s happened’s happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.
Protagonist: Fate?
Neil: Call it what you want.
Protagonist: What do you call it?
Neil: Reality. Now let me go.


 

Protagonist: Hey, you never did tell me who recruited you, Neil.
Neil: Haven’t you guessed by now? You did. Only not when you thought. You have a future in the past. Years ago for me. Years from now for you.
Protagonist: You’ve known me for years?
Neil: For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.
Protagonist: But for me, it’s just the beginning.
Neil: We get up to some stuff. You’re going to love it. You’ll see. This whole operation’s a temporal pincer.
Protagonist: Whose?
Neil: Yours! You’re only halfway there. I’ll see you at the beginning, friend.


 

Neil: We’re the people saving the world from what might have been. The world will never know what could’ve happened. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Because no one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off. Only the one that did.


 

Priya: [in London, as she’s attempting to kill Kat] How did you know?
Kat: [the protagonist plays a message left by Kat] Cannon Place, three o’clock. Probably nothing.
Protagonist: Posterity.


 

Protagonist: I told you you’d have to start looking differently at the world.
Priya: I have to tie up the loose ends.
Protagonist: That was never your job.
Priya: Then whose was it?
Protagonist: Mine. I realized I wasn’t working for you. We’ve both been working for me. I’m the protagonist.
Priya: Then you’d better tie up those loose ends.
Protagonist: [as he shoots her with a silencer] Mission accomplished.


 

Neil: It’s the bomb that didn’t go off. The danger no one knew was real. That’s the bomb with the real power to change the world.

 


 

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