“The stuff that I write doesn’t work very well as background music. You have to watch it from beginning to end and pay attention as if you were watching a play.”

Toby: All right. It couldn’t have gone far, right? Sam: No. Toby: Somewhere in this building…is our talent.

President Bartlet: There’s a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn’t think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but there they are, right upstairs in the Blue Room.

It seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.

The guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins best actress.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we’re presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated – not nearly as black and white as we’re led to believe.

It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.

And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe.

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

Toby Zeigler: There’s literally no one in the world I don’t hate right now.

When I feel that something I’m writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren’t good are completely manageable. If it’s not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn’t be happy about it

When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that’s not going to be me.

The downside to series television is that the schedule is ferocious. It constantly feels like you have a midterm due that you haven’t started yet.

There’s a great tradition in storytelling that’s thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that’s really what I wanted to do.

Film doesn’t have to worry. Movies are awesome. There’s no war going on, theaters aren’t going to lose.

There are no Asian movie stars

The hardest thing for me is getting started. If I’m writing a script, really 90 per cent of it would be just walking around, climbing the walls, just trying to put the idea together. Then the final 10 per cent would be writing it.