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

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

Probably your first agent is going to be some guy who also handles dog acts.

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.

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

There are a huge amount of people who sell a TV pilot, every year, but most of them never get produced. It's very easy to make a living and never get anything produced.

You need to know that going in, and you also need to be able to write all the time. So when somebody looks at you across the table and says, "What do you think about a movie where Miley Cyrus switches souls with a basset hound?" You need to be able to sit there and figure out how to make that possibly shootable.