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

People don't live their lives in a series of scenes that form a dramatic narrative, they don't speak in dialogue, they're not lit by a cinematographer or scored by a composer. The properties of real life and the properties of drama have almost nothing to do with each other. The difference between writing about reporters and being a reporter is the same as the difference between drawing a building and building a building.

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.

Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world.

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 got into dialogue because my parents began taking me to see plays from when I was very young. Too young, often, to understand the play I was watching: Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf when I was nine years old; That Championship Season when I was ten years old. But I loved the sound of dialogue; it sounded like music to me and I wanted to imitate that sound.