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.

I think that if I couldn't write, I would be unemployable.

With a television series, there's a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you're not writing well.

Conflict, when used as a device, makes for good television and bad journalism.

I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing, and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works.

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean.

I'd been concerned all along that the character of the president in the West Wing pilot would throw the ensemble out of whack, that that character would simply take up all the oxygen in a room. I wanted to hold off bringing this character in until the last possible moment.