Honestly, I don't try to guess at what most people want. I don't think I'd guess right, and I just think that that's not a good recipe for storytelling. I try to write what I like, what I think my friends would like.

I'm a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

It wouldn't kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.

I would love for people to think that I am as quick, clever, smart and heroic as the characters that I write, but those characters are characters.

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.

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.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.