Interstellar (2014) - Quotes

Cooper Asks TARS About Its Setting

Cooper: [[trust] What's your ] setting, TARS?

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Exploring the Limits of Possibility

CASE: This is not possible.

Cooper: [[necessary] No. It's ].

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Fuel Efficiency in Space Navigation

TARS: [As Cooper suddenly accelerates towards an out-of-control Endurance''] Cooper, there's no point in using our fuel to chase-

Cooper: Analyze the Endurance's spin.

Brand: Cooper, what are you doing?!

Cooper: Docking.

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Adjusting the Self-Destruct Sequence

Cooper: [As he tries to reconfigure TARS personality settings; [Humour] ] 75%.

TARS: Confirmed. Self destruct sequence in T minus 10… 9…

Cooper: Let's make that 60%.

TARS: 60%, confirmed. Knock, knock.

Cooper: You want fifty-five?

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Difficult Choices in Space Exploration

Cooper: We no longer have the fuel to visit both prospects, so, we have to choose.

Romilly: But how? They’re both promising. Edmunds’ data is better, but Dr. Mann is the one still transmitting, so…

Brand: We’ve no reason to suspect Endmunds’s data would have soured. His world has key elements to sustain human life.

Cooper: As does Dr. Mann’s.

Brand: Cooper, this is my field. And I really believe Edmunds’ 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. Accident is 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 Edmunds’ data is more promising.

Romilly: We should vote.

Cooper: Well, if we 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: [Stays quiet.] Maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand. May it’s some evidence, something 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 that 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. All right, Cooper, yes, the tiniest possibility of seeing Woolf again excites me. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Cooper: [Brand leaves] Honestly, Amelia, it might. TARS, chart a course for Dr. Mann’s.

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Conflict of Priorities in a Mission

Brand: I told you to leave me.

Cooper: And I told you to get your ass back here! Difference is, only one of us was thinking about the mission—

Brand: Cooper, you were thinking about getting home — I was trying to do the right thing!

Cooper: [pause] Tell that to Doyle. How long to drain, CASE?

CASE: Forty-five to an hour.

Cooper: The stuff of life, huh? What's this gonna cost us, Brand?

Brand: A lot. Decades.

Cooper: What happened to Miller?

Brand: Judging by the wreckage, she was broken up by a wave shortly after impact.

Cooper: How could the wreckage still be together after all these years?

Brand: Because of the time slippage. On this planet's time, she landed here just hours ago. She might have died only minutes ago.

CASE: The data Doyle collected was just the initial status, echoing endlessly.

Cooper: We're not prepared for this, Brand. You're a bunch of eggheads without the survival skills of a boy-scout troop.

Brand: We got this far on our brains, farther than any humans in history...

Cooper: No, not far enough. And we're stuck here till there won't be anyone left on Earth to save—

Brand: I'm counting every second, same as you, Cooper.

Cooper: [Brand shakes her head] Don't you have some clever way we jump into a black hole and get back the years? Don't you shake your head at me!

Brand: [[Time] ] is relative, it can stretch and squeeze, but it can't run backwards. The only thing that can move across dimensions like time is gravity.

Cooper: The beings that led us here ... they communicate through gravity ... Could they be talking to us from the future?

Brand: Maybe.

Cooper: Well, if they can—

Brand: [[dimensions; [past; [future; [mountain] Look, Cooper, they're creatures of at least five ], to them the ] might be a canyon they can climb into and the ] a ] they can climb up... but to us it's not, okay? I'm sorry, Cooper. I screwed up. But you know about relativity.

Cooper: [[Einstein] My daughter was ten. I couldn't explain ]'s theories before I left.

Brand: [[save; [world] Could you tell her you were going to ] the ]?

Cooper: [[understood] No. I wasn't much of a parent, but I ] the most important thing — let your kids feel safe. Which rules out telling ten-year-old that the world's ending.

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Balancing Speed and Safety in Space Travel

Cooper: We wanna get down fast, don't we?

Brand: Actually we want to get there in one piece.

Cooper: Hang on.

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Communication Dynamics in Interstellar Collaboration

Cooper: Ready?

CASE: Yup.

Cooper: Don't say much, do you?

CASE: TARS talks plenty for both of us.

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Communication Updates from Various Space Missions

Doyle: The lost communications came through.

Brand: How?

Doyle: The relay on this side cached them. Years of basic data, no real surprises. Miller's site has kept pinging thumbs up, as has Mann... but Edmunds went down three years ago.

Brand: Transmitter failure?

Doyle: Maybe. He was sending thumbs up right till it went dark.

Romilly: [Doyle nods, and Romilly begins drawing on a whiteboard] Miller still looks good? She's coming up fast ... with one complication: the planet is much closer to Gargantua than we thought.

Cooper: Gargantua?

Doyle: A very large black hole. Miller's and Dr. Mann's planets orbit it.

Brand: And Miller's is right on the horizon?

Romilly: A basketball on the hoop. Landing there takes us dangerously close. A black hole that big has a huge gravitational pull.

Cooper: Look, I can swing around that neutron star and decelerate—

Brand: It's not that, it's time. That gravity will slow our clock compared to Earth. Drastically.

Cooper: How bad?

Romilly: Every hour we spend down there will be maybe... seven years back on Earth.

Cooper: Jesus...

Romilly: That's relativity, folks.

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Facing Difficult Goodbyes and New Beginnings

Cooper: It is hard leaving everything... my kids, your father...

Brand: We're gonna be spending a lot of time together.

Cooper: [[learn] We should ] to talk.

Brand: [[honest] And when not to? … Just being ].

Cooper: I don't think you need to be that honest. 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.

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A Mission Beyond Earth’s Limits

Prof. Brand: [[reality; [help] We must confront the ] that nothing in our solar system can ] us.

Cooper: Now you need to tell me what your plan is to save the world.

Prof. Brand: We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it, and this is the mission you were trained for.

Cooper: I've got kids, Professor.

Prof. Brand: Then get out there and save them. We must reach far beyond our own lifespans. We must think not as individuals but as a species. We must confront the reality of interstellar travel.

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The Importance of Earth Over Space Exploration

Cooper: [[Moon] You don't believe we went to the ]?

Ms. Hanley: I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda, that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines...

Cooper: Useless machines?

Ms. Hanley: ..and if we don't want to repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.

Cooper: You know, one of those useless machines they used to make was called an MRI, and if we had one of those left the doctors would have been able to find the cyst in my wife's brain, before she died instead of afterwards, and then she would've been the one sitting here, listening to this instead of me. Which would've been a good thing because she was always the ... calmer one.

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Questioning Educational Standards and Expectations

Cooper: You're ruling out college for my son now? He's 15.

Principal: Tom's score simply isn't high enough.

Cooper: What's your waist line? What 32, 33 inseam?

Principal: I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.

Cooper: [[numbers; [future] You're telling me it takes two ] to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's ]?

Understanding Murphy's Law and Its Implications

Young Murph: [[name] Dad, why did you and mom ] 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. It means that whatever can happen will happen.

Indicating Presence with a Cue Light

TARS: [[joking] I have a cue light I can use to show you when I'm ], if you like.

Humorous remark about robot colonies and slaves

TARS: Everybody good? Plenty of slaves for my robot colony?

Urgency Over Caution in Critical Moments

CASE: Cooper, this is no time for caution.

TARS and CASE's Communication Dynamic

CASE: TARS talks plenty for both of us...

A Difficult Choice Between Family and Humanity

Amelia Brand: You might have to decide between seeing your children again and the future of the human race.

The Power of Love Across Time

Amelia Brand: [[Love; [time; [space] ] is the one thing that transcends ] and ].

Questioning Our Understanding of the Universe

Amelia Brand: [[theory] Maybe we've spent too long trying to figure all this out with ].

Understanding Gravity Through Black Hole Data

Murphy Cooper: [[Archimedes] * Quoting ] when she finishes equations related to information from the black hole about the gravity force.

A Birthday Wish for a Loved One

Murphy Cooper: Today is my birthday. And it's a special one because you once told me that when you came back, we might be the same age. Well, now I'm the same age that you were when you left... and it'd be really great if you came back soon.

The Power of Love in the Cosmos

Professor Brand: [[w:Do not go gentle into that good night|Do not go gentle into that good night; [Dylan Thomas] * Quoting famous lines of the poem "]" by ]

Resistance Against the Inevitable End

Professor Brand: [[night; [light] Do not go gentle into that good ]; Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the ].

Seeking Clarity in Uncertainty

Cooper: I don't care much for this -- pretending we're back where we started. I wanna know where we are. Where we're going.

The Spirit of Human Achievement

Cooper: [[defined; [ability; [moments; [dare; [stars; [destiny] We've always ] ourselves by the ] to overcome the impossible. And we count these ]. These moments when we ] to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the ], to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our ] lies above us.