“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.”

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.

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.

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.

Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I’m going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.

The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one – America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

I grew up in the theatre. It’s where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.

I would love for people to think that I am as quick, clever, smart and heroic as the characters that I write, but those characters are characters.

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.

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

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

That’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.

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.