Cobb Quotes in Inception (2010)

Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

Arthur: It would have to be a 747.

Cobb: Why is that?

Arthur: Because in a 747, the pilot's up top, and the first class cabin's in the nose, so no one would walk through. But you'd have to buy out the entire cabin. And the first class flight attendant...

Saito: I bought the airline.

[Everybody turns and stares at him. Saito just shrugs]

Saito: It seemed neater.

Cobb: I need to get home. That's all I care about right now.

Ariadne: Why can't you go home?

Cobb: Because they think I killed her.

Ariadne: [silence]

Cobb: Thank you.

Ariadne: For what?

Cobb: For not asking whether I did.

Cobb: She locked away a secret, deep inside herself, something she once knew to be true... but chose to forget.

[repeated lines]

Cobb: You're waiting for a train. A train that'll take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you. But you can't know for sure. Yet it doesn't matter. Now, tell me why?

Mal: Because you'll be together!

Saito: Have you come to kill me? I've been waiting for someone...

Cobb: Someone from a half remembered dream.

Saito: Cobb? Impossible. We were young men together. I'm an old man.

Cobb: Filled with regret...

Saito: Waiting to die alone...

Cobb: I've come back for you... to remind you of something. Something you once knew...

[the top spins without end]

Cobb: That this world is not real.

Saito: To convince me to honor our arrangement.

Cobb: To take a leap of faith, yes. Come back... so we can be young men together again. Come back with me...

[Saito reaches for the gun]

Cobb: Come back...

Cobb: They say we only use a fraction of our brain's true potential. Now that's when we're awake. When we're asleep, we can do almost anything.

Ariadne: Why is it so important to dream?

Cobb: Because, in my dreams we are together.

Cobb: [from trailer] Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

Mal: We'd be together forever. You promised me.

Cobb: I know. But we can't. And I'm sorry.

Mal: You remember when you asked me to marry you? You said you dreamt that we'd grow old together.

Cobb: But we did. We did. You don't remember?... I miss you more than I can bear, but... we had our time together. And I have to let go... I have to let you go.

Cobb: I can't stay with her anymore because she doesn't exist.

Mal: I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore.

Cobb: I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all you perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.

Cobb: Inception. Now, before you bother telling me it's impossible...

Eames: No, it's perfectly possible. It's just bloody difficult.

Cobb: I'm going to improvise. Listen, there's something you should know about me... about inception. An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.

Arthur: So, once we've made the plant, how do we go out? Hope you have something more elegant in mind than shooting me in the head?

Cobb: A kick.

Ariadne: What's a kick?

Eames: This, Ariadne, would be a kick

[kicks the leg of the chair Arthur's swinging at]

Arthur: [finds his balance and glares at Eames]

Cobb: What do you want?

Saito: Inception. Is it possible?

Arthur: Of course not.

Saito: If you can steal an idea, why can't you plant one there instead?

Arthur: Okay, this is me, planting an idea in your mind. I say: don't think about elephants. What are you thinking about?

Saito: Elephants?

Arthur: Right, but it's not your idea. The dreamer can always remember the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.

Cobb: No, it's not.

Mal: [Sitting on the ledge, to Cobb] I'm asking you to take a leap of faith.

Cobb: No I can't. You know I can't do that. Take a second, think about our children. Think about James. Think about Phillipa now.

Mal: If I go without you they'll take them away anyways.

Cobb: What does that mean?

Mal: I filed a letter with our attourney explaining how I'm fearful for my safety. How you've threatened to kill me.

Cobb: Why did you do that?

Mal: I love you, Dom.

Cobb: Why did you... why-why would you do that?

Mal: I freed you from the guilt of choosing to leave them. We're going home to our real children.

Cobb: No, no, no, no. Mal you listen to me, alright? Mal look at me, please.

Mal: [Closing her eyes] You're waiting for a train...

Cobb: Mal, goddammit! Don't do this!

Mal: A train that will take you far away...

Cobb: James and Phillipa are waiting!

Mal: You know where you hope this train will take you...

Cobb: They're waiting for us!

Mal: But you can't know for sure...

Cobb: Mal, look at me!

Mal: Yet it doesn't matter...

Cobb: Mal, goddammit!

Mal: Because you'll be together.

Cobb: Sweetheart! Look at me!

Mal: [Jumps off of the ledge]

Cobb: Mal, no! Jesus Christ!

Cobb: "I will split up my father's empire." Now, this is obviously an idea that Robert himself would choose to reject. Which is why we need to plant it deep in his subconscious. Subconscious is motivated by emotion, right? Not reason. We need to find a way to translate this into an emotional concept.

Arthur: How do you translate a business strategy into an emotion?

Cobb: That's what we're here to figure out, right? Now, Robert's relationship with his father is stressed, to say the least.

Eames: Well, can we run with that? We could suggest to him breaking up his father's company as a "screw-you" to the old man.

Cobb: No, 'cause I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time. We all yearn for reconciliation, for catharsis. We need Robert Fischer to have a positive emotional reaction to all this.

Eames: Alright, we'll try this, umm... "My father accepts that I want to create for myself, not follow in his footsteps."

Cobb: That might work.

Arthur: Might? We're gonna need to do a little better than 'might'.

Eames: Oh, thank you for your contribution, Arthur.

Arthur: Forgive me for wanting a little specificity, Eames.

[Eames appears confused at the word]

Arthur: Specificity?

Cobb: [notices that he's being followed] That price on my head, was that dead or alive?

Eames: Not sure. See if he starts shooting.

Yusuf: Brain function in the dream will be about twenty times to normal. When you enter a dream within that dream, the effect is compounded: it's three dreams, that's ten hours times twen...

Eames: I'm sorry, uh, maths was never my strong subject. How much time is that?

Cobb: It's a week the first level down. Six months the second level down, and... the third level...

Ariadne: ...is ten years! Who would wanna be stuck in a dream for ten years?

Yusuf: Depends on the dream.

Cobb: You create the world of the dream, you bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their subconscious.

Ariadne: How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that its reality?

Cobb: Well dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize how things are actually strange. Let me ask you a question, you, you never really remember the beginning of a dream do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on.

Ariadne: I guess, yeah.

Cobb: So how did we end up here?

Ariadne: Well we just came from the a...

Cobb: Think about it Ariadne, how did you get here? Where are you right now?

Ariadne: We're dreaming?

Cobb: You're actually in the middle of the workshop right now, sleeping. This is your first lesson in shared dreaming. Stay calm.

Ariadne: Why are they all looking at me?

Cobb: Because my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections start to converge on you.

Ariadne: Converge?

Cobb: It's the foreign nature of the dreamer. They attack like white blood cells fighting an infection.

Ariadne: They're going to attack us?

Cobb: No. Just you.

Arthur: What about his security? It's gonna get worse as we go deeper.

Cobb: I think we run with Mr. Charles.

Arthur: No.

Eames: Who's Mr. Charles?

Arthur: Bad idea.

Cobb: The second we get in that hotel with Fischer, his security is gonna be all over us. We run with Mr. Charles like we did on the Stein job.

Eames: So you've done it before?

Arthur: Yeah, and it didn't work. The subject realized he was dreaming and his subconscious tore us to pieces.

Eames: Excellent. But you learned a lot, right?

Mal: What are you doing here?

Ariadne: My name is...

Mal: I know who you are. What are you doing here?

Ariadne: I'm just trying to understand...

Mal: How could you understand? Do you know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole?

Ariadne: No...

Mal: I'll tell you a riddle. You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you; but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter. How can it not matter to you where that train will take you?

Cobb: Because you'll be together.

Cobb: [about Mal] She had locked something away, something deep inside her. The truth that she had once known, but... she chose to forget. Limbo became her reality.

Ariadne: What happened when you woke up?

Cobb: To wake up from that after, after years, after decades... after we'd become old souls thrown back into youth like that... I knew something was wrong with her. She just wouldn't admit it. Eventually, she told me the truth. She was possessed by an idea, this one, very simple idea, that changed everything. That our world wasn't real. That she needed to wake up to come back to reality, that, in order to get back home, we had to kill ourselves.

[Saito has been shot in the chest]

Cobb: How's he doing?

Ariadne: He's in a lot of pain.

Cobb: When we get down to the lower levels, the pain will be less intense.

Ariadne: And if he dies?

Cobb: Worst case scenario? When he wakes up, his mind is completely gone.

Saito: Cobb. I'll still honor the arrangement.

Cobb: I appreciate that, Saito, but when you wake up, you won't even remember that we had an arrangement. Limbo's gonna become your reality. You're gonna be lost down there so long that you're gonna become an old man.

Saito: Filled with regret.

Cobb: Waiting to die alone.

Saito: No. I'll come back. And we'll be young men together again.

[creates a whole new location out of two mirrors]

Cobb: Very impressive.

[notices Mal; flashback of himself and Mal on the same bridge]

Cobb: I know this bridge. This place is real, isn't it?

Ariadne: Yeah, I cross it everyday on the way to the college.

Cobb: Never recreate places from your memory. Always imagine new places.

Ariadne: Well, you gotta draw from stuff you know, right?

Cobb: Only use details, a street lamp or a phone booth, never entire areas.

Ariadne: Why not?

Cobb: Because building a dream from your memory is the easiest way to lose your grasp on what's real and what is a dream.

Ariadne: Is that what happened to you?

[grabs her arm]

Cobb: Hey listen to me. This has nothing to do with me. Understand?

Ariadne: Is that why you need me to build your dreams?

Arthur: Where were you? What happened to you?

Cobb: Got blocked by a freight train.

Arthur: [to Ariadne] Why would you put a train course in the middle of a downtown intersection?

Ariadne: Why, I didn't.

Arthur: Where did it come from?

Cobb: Let me ask you a question, why the hell were we ambushed, huh? Those were not normal projections. They've been trained, for God's sakes!

Arthur: You're right.

Ariadne: How could they be trained?

Arthur: Fischer's had an extractor teach his subconscious to defend itself, so, his subconscious has militarized. It should have shown in the research. I'm sorry.

Ariadne: These aren't just dreams. These are memories. And you said never to use memories.

Cobb: I know I did.

Ariadne: You're trying to keep her alive. You can't let her go.

Cobb: You don't understand. These are moments I regret, the memories that I have to change.

Cobb: I knew Inception was possible because I'd done it to my wife.

Ariadne: You might have the rest of the team convinced to carry on with this job, but they don't know the truth.

Cobb: Truth? What truth?

Ariadne: The truth that at any minute, you might bring a freight train through the wall. The truth that Mal is bursting through your subconscious. And the truth that as we go deeper into Fischer, we're also going deeper into you. And... I'm not sure we're gonna like what we find.

Cobb: Never recreate from your memory. Always imagine new places!

Cobb: I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.

Ariadne: Won't you tell me anything about this first?

Cobb: Before I describe the job I have to know you can do it.

Ariadne: Why?

Cobb: It's not, strictly speaking, legal.

Mal: You keep telling yourself what you know. But what do you believe? What do you feel?

Cobb: Guilt.

Arthur: You. What the hell was all that?

Cobb: I have it under control.

Arthur: I'd hate to see it out of control.

Cobb: You create the world of the dream. We bring the subject into that dream and fill it with their subconscious.

Ariadne: How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that it's reality?

Cobb: Well, dreams, they feel real while we're in them right? Its only when we wake up then we realize that something was actually strange.

Cobb: The moment's passed. Whatever I do I can't change this moment. I'm about to call out to them. They run away. If I'm ever going to see their faces I've gotta get back home. The real world.

Cobb: Downwards is the only way forwards.

Professor: Mr. Cobb has a job offer he would like to discuss with you.

Ariadne: Like a work placement?

Cobb: Not exactly.

Ariadne: Cobb, I'm coming with you.

Cobb: I promised Miles...

Ariadne: The team needs someone who understands what you're struggling with. And it doesn't have to be me, but then you have to show Arthur what I just saw.

Cobb: [to Saito] Get us another seat on the plane.

Cobb: There's no use threatening him in a dream, right, Mal?

Mal: It depends on what you're threatening. Killing him will just wake him up. But pain...

[shoots Arthur in the knee]

Mal: Pain is in the mind, and judging by the decor we're in your mind, aren't we, Arthur?

Cobb: You got the basic layout. Bookstore, cafe, almost everything else is here too.

Ariadne: Who are the people?

Cobb: Projections of my subconscious.

Ariadne: Yours?

Cobb: Yes. Remember, you are the dreamer, you build this world. I am the subject, my mind populates it. You can literally talk to my subconscious. That's one of the ways we extract information from the subject.

Ariadne: How else do you do it?

Cobb: By creating something secure, like a bank vault or a jail. The mind automatically fills it with information it's trying to protect. Understand?

Ariadne: Then you break in and steal it?

Cobb: Well...

Ariadne: I guess I thought that the dream space would be all about the visual. But it's more about a feel of it. My question is what happens when you start messing with the physics of it all...?

[folds city on top of itself]

Ariadne: It's something, isn't it?

Cobb: Yes, it is.

Cobb: I miss you more than I can bear, but we had our time together. I have to let you go.

Cobb: I came here to tell you... something.

[pause]

Cobb: Something that... you once knew to be true.

Saito: [remembering] Impossible...

Cobb: You shouldn't be here.

Ariadne: I just wanted to see what kind of tests you're doing on your own every night.

Cobb: This has nothing to do with you.

Ariadne: This has everything to do with me. You've asked me to share dreams with you.

Cobb: Not these. These are my dreams.

Cobb: If I get on this plane and you don't honor our agreement, when we land, I go to jail for the rest of my life.

Saito: Complete the job en route. I make one phone call from the plane. You'll have no trouble getting through Immigration.

Eames: Ah. So, this is your idea of losing a tail, huh?

Cobb: Different tail.

Cobb: No idea is simple when you have to plant it in someone else's mind.

Mal: If I jump, would I survive?

Cobb: A clean dive, perhaps. Mal, what are you doing here?

Mal: I thought you might be missing me.

Cobb: You know I am but I can't trust you anymore.

Mal: So what?

[Mal attacks Cobb and Ariadne; Cobb closes elevator door before Mal can reach them]

Mal: You promised! You promised!

Cobb: Please, I just have to keep you here, just for now.

Mal: You said we'd be together! You said we'd grow old together!

Cobb: I'll come back, I promise.

[Mal glares at them]

Mal: Tell me, do the children miss me?

Cobb: You can't imagine...

Ariadne: Why are they all looking at me?

Cobb: Because my subconscious feels that someone else is creating this world. The more you change things, the quicker the projections start to converge on you.

Ariadne: Converge?

Cobb: They sense the foreign nature of the dreamer. they attack like white blood cells fighting an infection.

Ariadne: What? They're going to attack us?

Cobb: No, no.

[quietly; almost to himself]

Cobb: Just you.

[creates a new bridge over the street]

Cobb: This is great, but I'm telling you, if you keep changing things...

Fischer: I'm insured against kidnapping for up to 10 million. This should be very simple.

Cobb: Shut up! It won't be.

Arthur: In your father's office, below the bookshelves is his personal safe. We need the combination.

Fischer: I don't know any safe.

Cobb: That doesn't mean you don't know the combination. Tell us what it is.

Fischer: I don't know.

Arthur: We have it on good authority you do know.

Fischer: Yeah? Whose authority?

Cobb: [From Trailer] I can access your mind through your dreams.

Cobb: [From Trailer] You're asking me for Inception. I hope you do understand the gravity of that request.

Cobb: [over the phone] How are you, huh? How are you doing?

James: Okay, I guess.

Cobb: Who's just okay? Is that you, James?

James: Yeah. Is Mommy with you?

Cobb: James, we talked about this. Mommy's not here anymore.

James: Where?

Arthur: And you! You knew about this and went along with it!

Yusuf: I trusted him!

Arthur: You trusted him! What, when he promised you half his share?

Yusuf: No, his whole share. Besides he said he'd done it before.

Arthur: You've done it before? What, with Mal? 'Cause that worked so good!

Cobb: That has nothing to do with it. I did what I had to do to get back to my children.

Cobb: I'm just doing what you taught me.

Professor: I never taught you to be a thief.

Cobb: All right, we continue on with the job, and we do it as fast as possible, and we get out using the kick, just like before.

Eames: Forget it. We go any deeper, we just raise the stakes. I am sitting this one out on this level, boys.

Mal: You're infecting my mind!

Cobb: I was trying to save you.

Mal: You betrayed me, but you can still make amends. You can still keep your promise. We can still be together, right here. In the world we built together.

Cobb: [From Trailer] The seed that we planted in this man's mind may change everything.

Cobb: I know how to find secrets from your Mind, I know all the tricks!

Cobb: I don't like trains.

Cobb: Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

Cobb: She locked away a secret, deep inside herself: a truth that she once knew... but chose to forget.

Cobb: An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.

Cobb: There's something you should know about me. About inception.

Cobb: You're asking me for inception. I do hope you understand the gravity of that request.

Cobb: Downward is the only way forward.

Cobb: Never recreate places from your memories, always imagine new places. Only use details. A street lamp or a phone booth. Never entire areas. Building a dream from your memory is the easiest way of losing your grasp on what's real and what is a dream.

Cobb: Must have blown you off. That is unless her phone number really is only six digits. Funny way to make friends, someone stealing your wallet like that.

Cobb: Strange weather. Isn't it?

Cobb: Yeah. Well, I don't like trains.

Cobb: We're gonna give you a fair trial, followed by a first class hanging.

Cobb: What a waste. This could have been such a sweet deal for us.

Paden: Yeah, Bad luck.

Paden: Goodbye Cobb.

Cobb: Goodbye Paden

[They draw]

Cobb: I was hoping you'd changed your mind about the job.

Paden: You didn't tell me you owned a saloon.

Cobb: [laughs] Oh, that ain't the half of it, friend.

[reveals his sheriff's badge]

Cobb: Welcome to heaven.

Cobb: [Cobb and Paden meet Tyree as he's being released from jail] Hey, Tyree, look who's here. Our old riding buddy. I invited Paden to join us, but he's not havin' any.

[laughs]

Tyree: [Tyree gets on his horse and rides up to Paden] Where's the dog?

Cobb: [to Paden] You owe me thirteen dollars. Yah!

[rides away with Tyree and others]

Paden: Thirteen. Bad luck.

Cobb: You know, Paden, part of what makes this work is me doing my job.

[points to his sheriff's badge]

Cobb: Those fellas you came into town with are causin' some trouble. It's gonna take some straightenin' out. I just want you to know it's got nothin' to do with us.

Paden: What is it you want from me?

Cobb: Nothin'. Do nothin'. Don't get between us.

Paden: I'm a great believer in doin' nothin'.

Cobb: We understand each other then?

Paden: Don't worry about me. If you're taking on Emmett, the LAST place I want to be is between you.

Kelly: [Kelly approaches Cobb near a table where Paden, Emmett and Stella are seated] You wanted to see me?

Cobb: Kelly, we're gonna make... an adjustment. I wanted you to be here when I offered Paden your job. I think he could do it without gettin' greedy. Stella and I are tired of you skimmin' our profits.

Kelly: [forced laugh] What are you talkin' about?

Cobb: I'm done talkin', Kelly. Get out.

Kelly: You can't do this.

Cobb: [smiling] Really?

[without warning, Cobb punches Kelly in the stomach, then grabs him, hurls him out of the saloon, and calmly walks back to the table]

Cobb: How 'bout it, Paden? Want the job?

[Sheriff Cobb has just found two of his men dead in the jail]

Cobb: Get Kyle and Dusty over here. And keep your eyes open! I'm runnin' out of deputies.

Shopkeeper: What's goin' on, sheriff?

Cobb: Hide and watch.

Stella: From what I've seen, Paden doesn't seem to care about money.

Cobb: Ha! Paden doesn't seem to care about anything, except he does. You just can never tell what it's going to be. Howdy, Mr. Slick.

Slick: Sheriff.

Cobb: Let me tell you about your friend Paden. A long time ago, me, Paden, Tyree, and a couple of other fellas did a lot of riding together. On business, and business was pretty good. We moved around a lot, the way you have to in that line of work. Somewhere along the way, we picked up this dog. One of us took to feeding it, so it followed us everywhere. Well, one day we're leaving this little Missouri town, in kind of a hurry with a bunch of the locals hot on our tail. Somehow this dog got tied up with Tyree's horse. Tyree went flyin'.

[laughs]

Cobb: Well, Tyree was pretty mad when he got up, and, being Tyree, he shot the dog. Didn't kill him, though. The next thing you know, Paden's down off his horse, and he's holdin' this dog, sayin' we should go on without him. I thought he was kidding, except he wasn't. Tyree was ready to plug 'em both - all this with the posse ridin' down on us.

[Paden has entered]

Cobb: I thought we were pals after all that riding we did together. All of a sudden he's worried about some mutt. Well, we did like he asked. We left him, and he went to jail for a dog. You want to hear the funny part? Paden didn't even like that damn dog.

Paden: It evened out in the end. They locked me up; the dog sprung me.

[Cobb laughs]

Stella: Where's the dog now?

Paden: He left me.

Cobb: C'mon, Paden... I'll buy you a drink.

[Cobb gives Paden his first amount of wages from the saloon]

Paden: This is a lot of money.

Cobb: Told you this was a sweet setup.

Paden: It is that.

Cobb: Maybe you could run it without Stella.

Paden: This is her life. I'll go before she does.

Cobb: Easy, boy. Just a suggestion.

Paden: Yeah, well, thanks but forget it.

McKendrick: It never should have got this far Cobb.

Cobb: This is as far as it's going.

McKendrick: Well I'll do my part, but you better watch your ass. These guys will shoot it off.

Cobb: What brings you to my saloon?

Paden: Luck, I guess.

Cobb: [to Paden] I'm trying to save you from yourself. Don't change your luck.

MacCready: I don't wanna hear about this blind man! What are you doing? Taking the stuff we're supposed to be selling?

Cobb: No, I...

MacCready: Oh, shut up, Ed! If you can't handle it, get me somebody who can! Get me Bruce Lee!

Cobb: Bruce Lee is dead.

MacCready: Then get his brother!

Nick Parker: Where is Frank Devereaux?

Cobb: F.O., Errol Flynn. You know what that means? Fuck off!

[Nick swings his sword and shaves off Cobb's bushy eyebrows. Cobb looks shocked]

Cobb: .

Nick Parker: I also do circumcision.

Cobb: You take it away... to show them what they had.

Cobb: Everyone has a box.

Cobb: Just because you broke into people's homes doesn't mean you need to look like a fucking burglar.

Cobb: You're developing a taste for it - the violating, the voyeurism... it's definitely you.

Cobb: [finding a house key under its doormat] Bing-fucking-go.

Cobb: It's like a diary. They hide it. But actually they want someone to see it. That's what I do.

Cobb: That's what it's all about - interrupting someone's life, making them see all the things they took for granted. Like when they go back and buy all this stuff from the shelves with the insurance money, they'll have to think for the first time in a long time why they wanted all this stuff, what it's for. You take it away, and show them what they had.

Bill: Jesus Christ! Do you think they believed you?

Cobb: Of course they didn't fucking believe me!

B.G. Rough: The only one that can help us is that woman.

Cobb: Well she's mad.

B.G. Rough: She will be if she stays in that house.

Cobb: Do you think she knows her husband isn't Mallen?

B.G. Rough: She knows something, that's why she's dangerous to him, that's why we've got to get her out of there.