“Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I’m writing episode seven now and couldn’t tell you what happens in episode eight.”

I don’t think I write differently when I’m writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.

People who don’t know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

As a dramatist, you’re looking for points of friction.

What’s interesting, is that I’ve found that the more accomplished a director is, the more secure they are in giving direction that sounds incredibly unsophisticated.

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.

My only ambition in life . . . is to wear size 28 jeans.

It’s a different story because guess what, the kid is only 28 years old, 28. He’s not his dad, not his grandpa. He’s 28 years old.

Talk to the guys that ain’t doing nothing, don’t talk to me. I just want eight guys out there with me who want to play.

I went from five foot eleven to six foot eight, and the more ball I played, the more I caught on to the game.

If he had 30 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, I can tell you exactly how he did it, what type of shots he made and who he passed to.

Trust me. I get up 530-6 every morning. I’m in the gym. I run a couple miles. I lift weights, and then I’m at work until 8-9 o’clock at night.

I failed, I think, seven [or] eight times before I finally got my first [championship]. It was just, you know, just about me growing up.

I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer’s gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.