“Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age”

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.

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 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.

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.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.

No matter what happens on the field, getting an education makes you a winner.

Really, coaching is simplicity. It’s getting players to play better than they think that they can.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

When a car’s ahead of you, as long as you can see it, you get a tow, just like the draft in NASCAR.

Once you get good, you need a total disposition about staying good.

You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.