Elite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.
AARON SORKINElite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.
AARON SORKINI don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of “fairness” is what’s troubling to me.
AARON SORKINThere’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.
AARON SORKINPresident 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.
AARON SORKINCertainly, 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.
AARON SORKINMy resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.
AARON SORKINHonestly, I don’t try to guess at what most people want. I don’t think I’d guess right, and I just think that that’s not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.
AARON SORKINIf you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.
AARON SORKINThe 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.
AARON SORKINTo use a basketball metaphor, West Wing cast was a group that liked to pass as much as they liked to shoot.
AARON SORKINMy 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.
AARON SORKINToby: All right. It couldn’t have gone far, right? Sam: No. Toby: Somewhere in this building…is our talent.
AARON SORKINI don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of “fairness” is what’s troubling to me.
AARON SORKINToby Zeigler: There’s literally no one in the world I don’t hate right now.
AARON SORKINWriting 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.
AARON SORKINThat’s a very real feeling – that I don’t have a story to tell. I’m not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.
AARON SORKIN