Aaron Sorkin Quotes
It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.
You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.
Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.
Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.
A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.
Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.
There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.
Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.
Tell me what you think and then tell me what the really smart person in the room who disagrees with you thinks.
We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.
My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.
Perhaps something like Facebook couldn't have been invented by somebody who goes out five nights a week and has a ton of friends and makes friends really easily.
You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.'
The real problem with all drugs is that they work. Fantastically. They're great, right up until the moment they kill you.
If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.
I'm not interested in the difference between good and bad, I'm interested in the differences between good and great.
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.
Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I'm going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.
It's populated by people who, by and large, have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me, it was just a great area for storytelling.
Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right? Sam: No. Toby: Somewhere in this building...is our talent.
Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.
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.
A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated.
I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.
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've never met anyone who has said, "My goal is to make America mediocre." That's a kind of hard-right conservative fallacy.
Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.
Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That's what I look for.
Government should be a place where people can come together, and no one gets left behind. No one…gets left behind. An instrument of good.
I can't remember my dreams more than a couple of seconds after I wake up. It's frustrating because sometimes I dream that I'm watching a really good movie.
The guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins best actress.
Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.
Josh: So, Toby, it’s election night. What do you say about a country that goes out of its way to protect even those citizens that try to destroy it? Toby: God bless America.
The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one - America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.
When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me.
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.
I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.
