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

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.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

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

It's important to remember that, first and foremost, if not only, this is entertainment. 'The West Wing' isn't meant to be good for you.

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

The Monica Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the West Wing pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.