Tony Gilroy Quotes & Sayings

#1. 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.

Tony Gilroy

#2. 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.

Tony Gilroy

#3. I worked for a lot of directors.

Tony Gilroy

#4. I love IMAX when it works right.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#6. Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#9. 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?

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#11. 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.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#13. You change or you hide your head in the sand.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#19. 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.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#21. You can't teach someone to be imaginative.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#25. 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.

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

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

Tony Gilroy

#31. 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.

Tony Gilroy