Allison Schroeder

“In a lot of movies, African-Americans are either maids or slaves, but that's not all they were. We need to show that. And we can't keep erasing history.”

“We need more diversity - we need more African-Americans on screen, Latinos, Asians, different religions. We have to be better about reflecting what our world looks like.”

“When I switched to screenplays - 'cause I had done musicals and plays - the first assignment in film school was, you have to write a silent film. And it's tremendously helpful to learn how to do that because dialogue can be a crutch. If you can master a silent film, you're golden.”

“When you start early, and you're writing for free, there's a lot of producers that will take advantage of you... It is seared in my brain forever.”

“I'm a stickler for structure. So I tend to make sure I'm hitting certain points in the script and that I'm progressing and moving things along. You know, are the characters keeping the plot moving along? And are they true, and do I know their motivations?”

“I've been rewritten on past projects and thought, 'That's not what she was - she was this really powerful woman, and there's nothing wrong with that.' I'm going to keep writing them, and hopefully people will start making them.”

“People tell me I'm very ambitious right now. But I just have a lot of stories in my head, and why can't I do them all?”

“I interned at NASA for five years, and I grew up in Cape Canaveral, and my grandfather was an engineer on the Mercury capsule, and my grandmother was a software engineer. I literally grew up playing on the Mercury capsule prototypes.”

“My first break was becoming a staff writer on the rebooted '90210.' And then I got stuck writing in the teen genre for a while.”

“I think a broader audience is really amazing. If there's no need for curse words or darkness, why go there? Why not make it PG?”

“I think you leave your imprint on every screenplay. I like to bring my experience as a woman to all my female characters that hopefully makes them a little more layered and complex.”

“I don't think I've ever been called up for an action film with a male lead - which is a shame. I'd love to take on Bond.”

“They used to time our elementary fire drills so we could watch the launches. I thought that was normal. I thought every kid watched every NASA launch.”

“You want to have a good cake? Get two engineers to build it.”

“I write in my pajamas on my sofa surrounded by my cats. It's a bit isolating.”

“I think a lot of times people look at me and say, 'Well, we can't possibly hand a show over to her to run.' It seemed like executives would be worried about me controlling a room and having power, and I'd say, 'Oh, I can control a room. I can give an order like nobody's business.'”

“I can't tell you the number of stories I've told with a female protagonist don't get bought, or they do get bought and get changed drastically. Or, I will literally write into the script different races, and they get cast all-white. I hope that stops and it opens the door for more voices to be heard in movies.”

“I walked into an international economics tutorial, and the professor said, 'I don't know how to teach a woman.' I said, 'It's the same as teaching a man.' I just sat down, and he had no choice but to start teaching. When I handed in my first paper, I think that shut him up.”

“There was an email forwarded to me from a first-grade teacher, and she said she was teaching them civil rights for MLK weekend, and a little first-grader stood up, and he said, 'I can explain segregation,' and proceeded to explain all the scenes from 'Hidden Figures.' And I died because that's everything.”

“We need to redefine what a hero looks like.”