I've never met anyone who has said, "My goal is to make America mediocre." That's a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.

Tell me what you think and then tell me what the really smart person in the room who disagrees with you thinks.

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.

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.

She's a person; the doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.

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

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.