Tony Gilroy Quotes

You have to know human behaviour ... And the quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You'll never write above what you know about people.

Corporations are like countries now, there's a king, there are serfs, there's a court, basically everything but moats. They're feudal societies, and there are good ones and bad ones.

But what I didn't recognize when I was much younger was this sort of ... when you're on, when you're really on, go at it.

I don't remember writing anything until I wrote my college application.

I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I'm writing in the beginning and sketching.

I'm trained to button scenes and round things off, and I get rewarded for doing that.

I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretence?

Don't say we're not right for each other because the way I see it, we might not be right for anyone else...

If you think about it, episodic filmmaking has not been something that people have really done.

I like knowing where I am in action sequences if I'm supposed to.

I have written a bunch of scripts that have not gotten produced, much more so early in my career than later.

When I start something, I know people I am working with, it's a project they're interested in.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

I don't like to be crazy on different levels all of the time.

Everyone I know who used to be in the intelligence community is moving into the corporate world.

What you need to know to direct a movie is [of] such great variety. I've worked with people who were maestros, who know everything. I've worked with people who were empty and lost, who had no clue what they were doing. You wouldn't hire them to paint your apartment. And then there's everything in-between. There's no list of skills you have to have to sit in that chair.

I worked for a lot of directors.

You just try to find something that interests you, and particular something that interests you that's gonna consume you the way that these big movies just really eat you up.

I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.

Fear changes everything. We're animals, and when we get afraid we act like animals. I'm not exempt from that.

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

I wanted to try before I got too old to try to do a big movie and I'd been looking for something to do that was interesting enough to spend those two years of my life on.

I like emotions, but I really don't like sentimentality, and I don't like when things break their spell.

I like movies that pop, that have a little bit of candy on, that freedom to have a little bit of extra fun, but are rooted in real behaviour. Rooted in cause and effect, never violating reality.