Film doesn't have to worry. Movies are awesome. There's no war going on, theaters aren't going to lose.

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.

What's interesting, is that I've found that the more accomplished a director is, the more secure they are in giving direction that sounds incredibly unsophisticated.

If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.

I had never thought of doing television. But my agent wanted me to meet John Wells, who had had a lot of success producing ER and China Beach. The night before the meeting, some friends were over for dinner and Akiva Goldsman and I slipped downstairs to the basement so we could sneak a cigarette. He said, "You know what would make a good television series? That." And he was pointing at The American President poster. He said, "There doesn't have to be a romance, just focus on a senior staffer."

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

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.