TONY GILROY

The people in the Philippines are so extraordinarily nice.

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

I prefer writing originals.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

You change or you hide your head in the sand.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Different people work different ways.

No one should feel sorry for a successful screenwriter.

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

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

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

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

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