Aaron Sorkin Quotes (22 Quotes)

Well, what a show like this will do that conventional news reporting can't, is, we can show you the two minutes before and after what you see on CNN.

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.

Our responsibility is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. That said, there is tremendous drama to be gotten from the great, what you would say, heavy issues.

There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.

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.

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.

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.

The play was written before 911 and July 7 and Abu Ghraib and a lot of things that have informed how we feel about the military, but I think it is going to resonate.

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

The problem with getting actors of this caliber is that if the show doesn't work, Tommy and I can be pretty sure it was our fault.

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.

I can justify those two things by simply saying, when that stops happening, when we lose our credibility, the show isn't as good.

I send them a lot of 'West Wing' hats, and they send me a lot of White House T-shirts and that kind of thing,

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.

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.

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.

John was an uncommonly good man, an exceptional role model and a brilliant actor.

We're shocked and deeply saddened by the sudden death of our friend and colleague.

I have to allow for the possibility that I'm not just writing the season finale, that I'm writing the series finale,

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.

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.

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.