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

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

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.

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

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.

There are no Asian movie stars

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

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

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

Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age

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

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

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

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.

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

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

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

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

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