30 Quotes by Daniel Gillies

We are not taught that hardship is the anvil upon which we are beaten into beauty. We are not taught that some of our greatest moments are some of our most difficult.

The romance of circumvention is one of the most destructive forces at work in our society. The American Idol freeway to greatness, Instagramming one's way into popular consciousness with selfies of our ass folds beneath short shorts, human growth hormone and performance-enhancing drugs for athletes, Adderall for the idle mind, reality television that sacrifices our dignity for fifteen lousy minutes...

It's all just venom to the soul and symptomatic of a larger issue: the idea of the shortcut. The result without the fight. The fight is the thing. The work.

At every turn you have to find a new kind of self-sovereignty over your environment. Every kid I see is at the mercy of Periscope, Twitter, or an Angry Bird of some description. People are shackled to their mediocrity by companies and businesses who want to consume your life with theirs.

If you do your work, eventually there will be a spark. A fire. A blaze.

I love to watch my daughter. At twenty-two months, that little soul is developing at a rate I will never understand. She's kind of taught me that growth and expansion are a person's natural state and inclination.

I'm not George Clooney, so I can't just pick and choose. I take roles where they occur.

Nobody really truly supporting independent filmmakers anymore. It's just dire. There's a lot of bad filmmaking, and there's a lot of people worshipping some terrible filmmakers. It's a waste of all of our time, if you don't feel anything. We are an age of YouTube kids. We don't care so much anymore. It's all about marketing.

We are contaminated with the idea of "winning" and defeating others. Indoctrinated by parents, schools, and our ubiquitous media, hammered with a lie: The only way to be truly triumphant is if we are dominant before supposed "competitors" rather than beautiful before ourselves.