“There’s that process of writing it – then you come out of your room into the sunlight, and you now have to complete the circuit and make the connection finally with the audience.”

I’m a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage.

Elite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.

I like workplace shows and White House was a very glamorous workplace to set a show in; it appealed to a sense of romanticism and idealism that I have.

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.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word ‘census’, and people fall asleep.

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.

What strikes me about Jesus is that he is a remarkably true person; he never changes his personality to fit in with whatever crowd he finds himself. He is simply himself, and he never plays to his audience.

Most of what’s tricky about comedy is the perception of it and the audience’s expectation.

There are only a few genres, horror and comedy, where you can get that immediate feedback from the audience.

Any show that’s bringing in a young audience is doing a good thing, because that’s the only way that theater will continue to grow.

I think the British audience might be more open-minded with some of my imagery and weird choices.

There are jokes I tell in the show that don’t get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers.

Hollywood has to appeal to the broadest audience, and when it comes to most social and economic issues, America is progressive. Because of that, the messages that are in Hollywood movies tend to be, for instance, pro-environment.

All the other audience members are going to be dead soon!