Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right? Sam: No. Toby: Somewhere in this building...is our talent.

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

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.

My preference would have been to not go back on the air after 9\11, at all until the time felt right but that wasn't an option.

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.

President Bartlet: There's a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn't think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but there they are, right upstairs in the Blue Room.

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