“I’m terribly afraid of failure. When your identity is wrapped up in writing and you’ve written something that doesn’t work, it’s a tough pill to swallow.”

With a television series, there’s a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you’re not writing well.

I’ll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it’s really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.

I’ve never met anyone who has said, “My goal is to make America mediocre.” That’s a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated.

My preference would have been to not go back on the air after 911, at all until the time felt right but that wasn’t an option.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that’s what I wanted to do.

She’s a person; the doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.

I’ve never met anyone who has said, “My goal is to make America mediocre.” That’s a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

I’m a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

I think that if I couldn’t write, I would be unemployable.

My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.

It’s populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.

To use a basketball metaphor, West Wing cast was a group that liked to pass as much as they liked to shoot.

Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.

Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you’d build a castle at the beach. You’re just taking your hands and you’re mounting up sand.

This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.