I don't have personal experience and knowledge about anything but theater. I've been tutored very well on the subject, but ultimately I'm going back to the rules of drama. There are genres that I like as an audience member that I can't write as a writer. I can't write crime, and I like a good thriller as much as anybody.

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

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

Government should be a place where people can come together, and no one gets left behind. No one…gets left behind. An instrument of good.

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.

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.