Aaron Sorkin

I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white, and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time, but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent, and I'm not your mommy; I'm a white piece of paper. You wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like. ”

I'm not on Facebook, and I don't tweet, but I know plenty of people who love both. ”

I desperately need the love of complete strangers. That's one reason I overtip. I love when skycaps, waiters, and valets are happy to see me. ”

I get nervous before openings or premieres or when someone's reading a new script, and I get nervous when my daughter isn't in my immediate field of vision. ”

If the characters on 'The West Wing' were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn't find it believable. ”

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. ”

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? ”

I had a lot of survival jobs. One was for the Witty Ditty singing-telegram company. I was in the red-and-white stripes with the straw boater hat and kazoo. Balloons. Even when you're sleeping on a friend's couch, you have to pay some kind of rent. ”

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence. ”

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