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

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.

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.