The Prestige

"Never show anyone. They'll beg you and they'll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up... you'll be nothing to them."

Sarah: Alfred, I can't live like this!
Alfred Borden: "Well, what do you want from me?"
Sarah: "I want... I want you to be honest with me. No tricks, no lies, no secrets.... Do you... do you love me?"
Alfred Borden: "Not today. No."

Alfred Borden: "I love you."
Sarah: "You mean it today?"
Alfred Borden: "Of course."
Sarah: "It just makes it so much harder when you don't."

Cutter: "Take a minute to consider your achievement. I once told you about a sailor who drowned."
Robert Angier: "Yes, he said it was like going home."
Cutter: "I lied. He said it was agony."

Alfred Borden: "So... we go alone now. Both of us. Only I don't have as far to go as you. Go. You were right, I should have left him to his damn trick. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for a lot of things. I'm sorry about Sarah. I didn't mean to hurt her... I didn't. You go and live your life in full now, all right? You live for both of us."

Alfred Borden: "You went half way around the world, you spent a fortune, you did terrible things - really terrible things, Robert, and all for nothing."
Robert Angier: "For nothing?"
Alfred Borden: "Yeah!"
Robert Angier: "You never understood why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special. You really don't know? It was... it was the look on their faces..."

"The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything."

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige'."