When somebody would come in with a sketch that was not so good, you figured out in a room how to make that sketch work.

You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to. What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office and they say, "Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?".

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.

You have to be willing to throw [writing] stuff away and replace it.

If you can learn to be incredibly passionate about your work without fighting for it just because it's yours, that's a huge thing.