Top 45 Quotes & Sayings by Dan Gilroy

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Dan Gilroy.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Daniel Christopher Gilroy is an American screenwriter and film director. He is best known for writing and directing Nightcrawler (2014), for which he won Best Screenplay at the 30th Independent Spirit Awards, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 87th Academy Awards. His other screenwriting credits include Freejack (1992), Two for the Money (2005), The Fall (2006), Real Steel (2011), and The Bourne Legacy (2012)—the last in collaboration with his brother Tony Gilroy. His wife, Rene Russo, has also been his frequent collaborator since the two met in 1992 and married later that year.

American - Writer | Born: June 24, 1959

Source: Wikipedia

A lot of times, L.A. is desaturated, and cement and freeways, and downtown.

Dan Gilroy

I think a first-time director always has to convince a lot of people that they're ready to do it.

Dan Gilroy

When I'm writing, I'm trying to access my subconscious and turn off my conscious brain. I use my conscious for research, but when I'm actually writing, I'm trying to get into a place where I'm tapping into the deeper, darker elements of what's going on.

Dan Gilroy

We rely on editors of blogs or websites and television stations to supply us these images, and the filter is becoming very thin and very porous. The ratings race for TV and websites is incredibly fierce, and one of the ways of getting people to watch is through graphic violent images.

Dan Gilroy

I had written a script called 'Freed,' which I had wanted to direct.

Dan Gilroy

I moved to L.A. and watched a lot of local television news, and I started to see the burn logos up on the upper right hand corner - On-Scene Video, RMG Media Group, and all these other ones. I just became intrigued with it.

Dan Gilroy

The friends we have, these are choices that - unlike family, which we have no choice in, and I love my family, thank God - we've given ourselves, to some degree.

Dan Gilroy

I'm an enormous Tim Burton fan.

Dan Gilroy

I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it.

Dan Gilroy

The smorgasbord of images now presented to us is getting bloodier. They're becoming more frequent - almost hourly.

Dan Gilroy

I feel that the world is increasingly about the bottom line, and not so much about human respect or human dignity. In that regard, people who care about other people will not be in a position to make choices and do things that other people who they're competing against will get to do.

Dan Gilroy

I watch a lot of television, for better or worse, and I am particularly interested in what Michael Moore brought up in 'Bowling for Columbine,' which is the idea that they're selling a narrative of fear.

Dan Gilroy

I spend most of my time in a room alone where eight hours go by, and I have no sense of time. I work seven days a week, and I live in this sort of vague subconscious fog a lot.

Dan Gilroy

Shooting at night in Los Angeles is amazing. The city shuts down at 10 P.M. every night, and a whole different cast of characters comes out.

Dan Gilroy

I think there is an enormous sea change happening in the global workforce. It has a lot to do with globalization. I think that people used to have a hope for a career or meaningful employment, and its been reduced to internships, part-time work or just grossly underpaid work.

Dan Gilroy

Every film you're commissioned to write is all about an arc; usually, the arc is that the world creates a change in the character, usually for the better. To not have an arc, the messages and ideas in the film became more prominent.

Dan Gilroy

I had heard about the nightcrawling world, and I'm very aware that there are tens of millions of young people around the world who are facing bleak employment prospects.

Dan Gilroy

One of the things about the '70s films I love - the films 'Nightcrawler' is being compared to, like, 'Taxi Driver' - is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.

Dan Gilroy

Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.

Dan Gilroy

I find Los Angeles to be a place of great physical beauty, in which you have the oceans and the mountains, and there's a vertical sense and a desert light that you can see forever.

Dan Gilroy

The spirit of L.A. is untamed wilderness. It's earthquakes and wildfires and oceans and mountain lions and fog. There's great physical beauty.

Dan Gilroy

In Los Angeles, you drive around, and you're coming back from a club or something, and all of a sudden, you'll encounter a coyote. And they're very lean, hungry-looking animals.

Dan Gilroy

News has become entertainment. Once that happens, a whole series of horrific events start to happen, whether it's the lack of dissemination of something that can inform you or something that actually negatively impacts society.

Dan Gilroy

When an accident or a crime happens, there's a period of time before the yellow tape goes up, before the official response becomes formalized. That allows the nightcrawlers to get very close.

Dan Gilroy

There are a lot of sociopaths running around who are probably our friends, if not us, and we don't know it.

Dan Gilroy

When I'm directing, I noticed I'm not using my subconscious at all. I'm literally using the whole front part of my brain all the time. When you walk on the set, every moment you have to be there because something's going on that requires attention.

Dan Gilroy

A sociopath is not just someone who doesn't care about human emotion. They're someone who understands people to the point that they can manipulate them to an extraordinary degree.

Dan Gilroy

'To Die For,' with Nicole Kidman, is great - her desire to be a part of news, how she uses news to further her career and how it can drive you insane. I love that movie.

Dan Gilroy

The real reason why people are going with digital is that it's extraordinarily mobile, and it's cheaper, and it has a great image, and you just can't beat it at night. It's pulling in variations of colors; it's pulling in lights from 40 miles away - a candle would be seen.

Dan Gilroy

I have a strong desire to communicate what I feel about the world. That's exciting to me.

Dan Gilroy

Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.

Dan Gilroy

Media is extraordinarily important and is an extraordinarily powerful tool. There's a reason that the first things that a rebellion or revolt will take is the media. The story you transmit is the story that becomes a given, or the narrative of a country and people.

Dan Gilroy

My screenwriting credits in my career are probably not dissimilar to some other ones in the sense that a lot of the scripts you write don't get made, and the ones that do get made are certainly - as a writer, they're not your vision.

Dan Gilroy

All of us have a bit of a sociopath inside of us, and it's wrong to think that somebody is just clearly sociopathic, because they're not. It's interesting to explore the shadings and nuances within a person. Those feelings exist within more human beings than people may want to acknowledge.

Dan Gilroy

I'm often stunned when I come up over Mulholland, and I'm looking down at the Valley, and I can see for thirty miles; I can see the mountains, or all the way to the ocean.

Dan Gilroy

A sociopath is just a label and doesn't encompass the entire being of a person.

Dan Gilroy

A number of years ago, I found a book of photography by Weegee; he was a crime photographer in the 1930s in New York. He was the first person to put a police scanner in a car and drive around.

Dan Gilroy

It's the reality: film is a director's medium, and, ultimately, they are the ones that are in charge, and you have to respect that because somebody has to be in charge. But, yeah, you do reach a point where you want to have your voice come out.

Dan Gilroy

Has Werner Herzog ever said anything that wasn't true? What a brilliant fountain of wisdom. Everything he touches I'm just fascinated by.

Dan Gilroy

I think Los Angeles is often portrayed as kind of a petri dish, where bad decisions start and then spread to the rest of the world. I don't see it that way. I feel Los Angeles is a place of almost primal struggle and survival. It's not a city that embraces its inhabitants.

Dan Gilroy

A script like 'Nightcrawler' gives me an opportunity to truly realize a vision that's mine, which is exciting.

Dan Gilroy

I don't know too many people who, when the TV announcer says, 'Viewer discretion is advised', then turn the TV off. Those are code words for, 'Turn the sound up; this is gonna be really good.'

Dan Gilroy

I think there's a connection with 'Nightcrawler' and 'Blowup' and other films where visual imagery is integral to the story. It allows you to play with images.

Dan Gilroy

A script like Nightcrawler gives me an opportunity to truly realize a vision thats mine, which is exciting.

Dan Gilroy

I had written a script called "Freed," which I had wanted to direct.

Dan Gilroy