Tony Gilroy Quotes

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

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

Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

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

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

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

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

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

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

I worked for a lot of directors.

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

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

I prefer writing originals.

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 love IMAX when it works right.

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.

You change or you hide your head in the sand.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Different people work different ways.

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

The people in the Philippines are so extraordinarily nice.

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.