Tenet Quotes

The Protagonist: There's a cold war.
Neil: Nuclear?
The Protagonist: Temporal.
Neil: Time travel?
The 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.
The Protagonist: Sure, that's exactly what I meant.
Neil: I have a master's in physics.
The Protagonist: Well, try and keep up.

The Protagonist: What's happened, happened. I get it now. But it's harder to take things on trust from people speaking half-truths.
Neil: That's not fair.
The Protagonist: You were a part of this before we met. Were you working for Priya?
Neil: No.
The Protagonist: Who recruited you,

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

The Protagonist: This reversing the flow of time... doesn't us being here now, mean it never happened? Could we stop them?
Neil: Optimistically, I'd say that's right.
The Protagonist: Pessimistically?
Neil: In a parallel worlds theory, we can't know the relationship between consciousness and multiple

realities. Does your head hurt yet ? Try to get some sleep.

The Protagonist: You knew it was me coming out of that vault, why don't you say?
Neil: It's a lot of explaining when someone who's about to put a bullet into his own brain.
The Protagonist: But afterwards?
Neil: Thing's the same. I knew you'd be okay. What's happened, happened. If I told you and you acted

differently, who knows? Policy is to suppress.
The Protagonist: Whose policy?
Neil: Ours, my friend. We're the people saving the world from what might have been.

Wheeler: When you exit the airlock, take a moment to orient yourself. Things will feel strange. When you run, the wind will be at your back. You encounter fire, ice will form on your clothes as transferred heat is reversed. Gravity would feel normal but you're reversed from the world around you. You may experience distortions in your vision and hearing, this is normal.

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

Neil: Documents are vulnerable to...
Klaus: To fire? Absolutely!
Neil: No, I was going to say water damage from the sprinkler systems.
Klaus: We don't use sprinklers. The facility is flooded with halide gas, displacing all the air within seconds.
Neil: Can you show me?

Klaus: If I did, we'd suffocate.
Neil: What about the staff?
Klaus: Halide only fills the vaults. They just have to get into either corridor, and there is a ten-second warning.
Neil: At least you give them ten seconds.
Klaus: Well, Sir, our clients use us because we have no priorities

above their property.
Neil: Blimey!

Ives: This is a proofing window. When you approach the turnstile, you don't see yourself in the proofing window, do not enter the machine.
The Protagonist: Why not?
Ives: You don't see self reverse exit the machine then you ain't getting out.
The Protagonist: Is that gonna work?
Ives:

Yeah. See for yourself.

Neil: All doors are fireproof. Hydraulic closers, simple key and electronic triggers. Surprisingly easy once they've been locked down.
The Protagonist: Why a lockdown?
Neil: Power switches to fail safe securing the outdoors, indoors revert to factory settings. Then pickable locks, it's a child's play really.
The

Protagonist: Child's play? They're inside airport security, they have to worry about climate control not armed raid.
Neil: So how do we get enough fire power through the perimeter to trigger the lockdown procedure. That wall of Freeport.
The Protagonist: You've got something?
Neil: You're not gonna like it.