Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I'm going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.

I wrote the show West Wing for the two years before and the two years after 9/11. Suddenly everyone in the world had been through something that our characters had not been through; the whole trajectory of the world had changed. Yet our show took place in a parallel universe. I wasn't really sure what to do about this. In no one's wildest dreams did it occur that an event like this could possibly happen.

Television from its inception had the number one goal to alienate as few people as possible. That's why if you look at 1950s, 1960s American sitcoms, the characters don't live any place in particular, religion is never discussed, politics is never discussed, you never really know what anyone's job is; nothing that could make these people seem different from you is ever discussed.

As an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written. And then, of course, you can't do it without the musicians who can play it.

That's a very real feeling - that I don't have a story to tell. I'm not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.

This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.