Aaron Sorkin quotes:

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

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 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.

One of the biggest challenges in the past for me in working on the networks was that audiences have grown accustomed to television being something that keeps you company-background music, something that you have on while you're flipping through a magazine, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, putting the kids to bed.

There'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.

We're about to shoot an episode on Air Force One, for instance, and we're going to take liberties, small liberties, with Air Force One, as we take small liberties with our White House set.

When I feel that something I'm writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren't good are completely manageable. If it's not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn't be happy about it

It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.

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

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.

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.

There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them.

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.

There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups... but they're coming for ya. It's a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.

Mrs. Landingham, does the President have free time this morning? The President has nothing but free time, Toby. Right now he's in the residence eating Cheerios and enjoying Regis and Kathie Lee. Should I get him for you? Sarcasm's a disturbing thing coming from a woman of your age, Mrs. Landingham. What age would that be, Toby? Late twenties? Atta boy.

The stuff that I write doesn't work very well as background music. You have to watch it from beginning to end and pay attention as if you were watching a play.

I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.

There are no Asian movie stars

Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it's the only thing that ever has.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

If you close your eyes you can imagine the hackers sitting in a room, combing through the documents to find the ones that will draw the most blood. And in a room next door are American journalists doing the same thing. As demented and criminal as it is, at least the hackers are doing it for a cause. The press is doing it for a nickel.

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.

Make no mistake about it, you are dumb. You're a group of incredibly, well-educated dumb people. I was there. We all were there. You're barely functional. There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups, but the screw-ups, they're a-coming for ya. It's a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.

When you're writing a movie or a play and writing isn't going well, which is for me the normal condition - it's an exceptional day when suddenly I've got something and it's going well - you can call the studio or the producer or whoever is waiting for it and say, "I know I said I was going to have it in by the end of the summer.

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

The downside to series television is that the schedule is ferocious. It constantly feels like you have a midterm due that you haven't started yet.

I love writing. I'm not particularly comfortable in the actual world - I'm much more comfortable on the page. So if I could have a life where I could just slip the pages under the door and somebody would slip me a meal back, then that would be perfect for me.

My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.

Tell me what you think and then tell me what the really smart person in the room who disagrees with you thinks.

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense." --Sam Seaborne, West Wing

I'm a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage.

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

And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe.

Toby Zeigler: There's literally no one in the world I don't hate right now.

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

With a television series, there's a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you're not writing well.

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.

Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day. Civility, respect, kindness, character.

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

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

Humans know when it's not a good story. Unless you do this for a living, you may not know exactly why you don't like a story, but you can't fool an audience ever. They know when you have it and they know when you don't.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.

You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.'

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.

People don't live their lives in a series of scenes that form a dramatic narrative, they don't speak in dialogue, they're not lit by a cinematographer or scored by a composer. The properties of real life and the properties of drama have almost nothing to do with each other. The difference between writing about reporters and being a reporter is the same as the difference between drawing a building and building a building.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

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.

I'm not interested in the difference between good and bad, I'm interested in the differences between good and great.

I've never met anyone who has said, "My goal is to make America mediocre." That's a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

The real problem with all drugs is that they work. Fantastically. They're great, right up until the moment they kill you.

I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing, and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works.

It's certainly easy for me to make a fictional character mad about something. I can get them angry about something that I'm relatively indifferent about, just because I'm not educated on it, if I go to someone who is educated about it and is passionate about it. I find a point of fiction and then give it to them.

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

I love writing, but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, Giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy: I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like.

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.

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.

I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.

Never argue with a drunk or a fool.

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.

A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated.

A hero would die for his country, but he'd much rather live for it.

Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world.

We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of 20 year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world I don't know what the f^&k you're talking about.

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,

Conflict, when used as a device, makes for good television and bad journalism.

Film doesn't have to worry. Movies are awesome. There's no war going on, theaters aren't going to lose.

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one

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.

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.

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

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

She's a person; the doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.

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

I'm a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that's what I wanted to do.

I think that if I couldn't write, I would be unemployable.

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.

Perhaps something like Facebook couldn't have been invented by somebody who goes out five nights a week and has a ton of friends and makes friends really easily.

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.

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.

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.

When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me.

If I get an idea for a series that I really like, I'm sure I won't be able to resist coming back and doing it.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean.

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.