“It seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.”

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.

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

As a dramatist, you’re looking for points of friction.

What’s interesting, is that I’ve found that the more accomplished a director is, the more secure they are in giving direction that sounds incredibly unsophisticated.

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

President 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.

It seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.

The guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins best actress.

You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we’re presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated – not nearly as black and white as we’re led to believe.

It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.