Quotes By Tony Gilroy

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

I worked for a lot of directors.

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

Developing films with directors, developing films with actors, is a poor percentage play for a screenwriter.

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

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.

I prefer writing originals.

The screenwriters I know share a few personality traits and one of them is anxiety.

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.

Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Different people work different ways.

The main thing for me is I really like strong endings. If there's a strong ending, you can take more time in the beginning, your first act can be really quite different.

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

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

I used to be, when I was young, I used to be extremely regular and very organized.

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

You can't teach someone to be imaginative.

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.

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

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

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?

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

You change or you hide your head in the sand.

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