“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.”

I think it’s up to writers to write stuff that is compelling enough that people want to watch.

It’s a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.

I’m sick of girls who don’t know how to high-five.

I 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.

As an audience member, I like the sound of something that’s been written – I like it to sound written. And then, of course, you can’t do it without the musicians who can play it.

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

Honestly, 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.

The thing I know how to do most is write a play. I came up loving plays and learning about plays and writing plays. I actually feel like an outsider when I’m writing movies and television.

It’s important to remember that, first and foremost, if not only, this is entertainment. ‘The West Wing’ isn’t meant to be good for you.

We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.

I want to convey that I’m crazy about the Kardashians – but I’m not sure which is which.

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.

The 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.

If 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.

Toby: All right. It couldn’t have gone far, right? Sam: No. Toby: Somewhere in this building…is our talent.

Josh: So, Toby, it’s election night. What do you say about a country that goes out of its way to protect even those citizens that try to destroy it? Toby: God bless America.

Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting fo the dollies.

If I can make a generalization, men get into politics because, from the time they’re little boys, they’ve been wanting to be President.

Scouting is a game for boys under the leadership of boys under the direction of a man.

The Good Turn will educate the boy out of the groove of selfishness.

I call on men and boys everywhere to join us. Violence against women and girls will not be eradicated until all of us – men and boys – refuse to tolerate it.

A fisherman does not bait his hook with food he likes. He uses food the fish likes. So with boys.

Achieving gender equality requires the engagement of women and men, girls and boys. It is everyones responsibility.

Every father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn’t do when he was young.