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

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

Television from its inception had the number one goal to alienate as few people as possible. That's why if you look at 1950s, 1960s American sitcoms, the characters don't live any place in particular, religion is never discussed, politics is never discussed, you never really know what anyone's job is; nothing that could make these people seem different from you is ever discussed.

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.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the West Wing pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.

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