The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time, is really the stuff that interests me.

If bad taste were a felony, every writer I know would’ve done prison time.

When all of your decisions are based on economics, you end up with a sameness of vision. You’re not taking the risks, you’re not exploiting the passions of your creators. You’re manufacturing product for a huge vending machine.

Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don’t know what you’ll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can’t really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they’re good.

The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we’re so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.

Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.