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.

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

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.

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

I got into dialogue because my parents began taking me to see plays from when I was very young. Too young, often, to understand the play I was watching: Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf when I was nine years old; That Championship Season when I was ten years old. But I loved the sound of dialogue; it sounded like music to me and I wanted to imitate that sound.

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

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.