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.

No one can help you write. No one can teach you how to write.

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

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.

The people in the Philippines are so extraordinarily nice.

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?

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.

Different people work different ways.

Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

A reversal is just anything that's a surprise. It's a way of keeping the audience interested.

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

I think what I've recognized over the years is that I'm very, very bingey, extremely bingey when it comes to writing.

I worked for a lot of directors.

I've never taken a job on anything I didn't want to do.

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

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

Once a film costs a certain amount of money, things have to round off.

I prefer writing originals.

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

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

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

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

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

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