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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I liked writing, and I loved movies, obsessively loved movies, but I had never made the leap of thinking I would actually come out here and write stuff.

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

The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.

I don’t think anyone ever gets completely used to conflict. If it’s not a little uncomfortable, then it’s not real. The key is to keep doing it anyway

I was a teen star. That's disgusting enough.

I'm glad I haven't married - I crave excitement.

Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.

I stand by my opinions when I know I'm right, Captain Phelan. Whereas you stand by yours merely because you're stubborn.

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.

Today, aid to Colombia is given under the pretext of a drug war. That's pretty hard to take seriously. Ten years ago, Amnesty International flatly called it a myth.

That's the biggest rule in Hollywood: Don't spend your own money.

It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one, meaningless life of yours.