Aaron Sorkin Quotes

Film doesn't have to worry. Movies are awesome. There's no war going on, theaters aren't going to lose.

It wouldn't kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.

As a dramatist, you're looking for points of friction.

What's interesting, is that I've found that the more accomplished a director is, the more secure they are in giving direction that sounds incredibly unsophisticated.

That's a very real feeling - that I don't have a story to tell. I'm not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.

With a television series, there's a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you're not writing well.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that's what I wanted to do.

The stuff that I write doesn't work very well as background music. You have to watch it from beginning to end and pay attention as if you were watching a play.

There's that process of writing it - then you come out of your room into the sunlight, and you now have to complete the circuit and make the connection finally with the audience.

I would love for people to think that I am as quick, clever, smart and heroic as the characters that I write, but those characters are characters.

If I get an idea for a series that I really like, I'm sure I won't be able to resist coming back and doing it.

I think it's up to writers to write stuff that is compelling enough that people want to watch.

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.

To use a basketball metaphor, West Wing cast was a group that liked to pass as much as they liked to shoot.

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren't that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

I want to convey that I'm crazy about the Kardashians - but I'm not sure which is which.

I'm sick of girls who don't know how to high-five.

The thing I know how to do most is write a play. I came up loving plays and learning about plays and writing plays. I actually feel like an outsider when I'm writing movies and television.

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

Never argue with a drunk or a fool.

I like workplace shows and White House was a very glamorous workplace to set a show in; it appealed to a sense of romanticism and idealism that I have.

People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

It seems to me that more and more we've come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.

I don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of “fairness” is what’s troubling to me.

I'm terribly afraid of failure. When your identity is wrapped up in writing and you've written something that doesn't work, it's a tough pill to swallow.

If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.

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

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

The downside to series television is that the schedule is ferocious. It constantly feels like you have a midterm due that you haven't started yet.

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one.

Conflict, when used as a device, makes for good television and bad journalism.

I think that if I couldn't write, I would be unemployable.

My preference would have been to not go back on the air after 9\11, at all until the time felt right but that wasn't an option.

Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right?Sam: No.Toby: Somewhere in this building...is our talent.

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.

You are like seven of the strangest women I have ever met.

Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place.

Presidents don't make new friends. That's why they've got to keep their old ones." Adm. Fitzwallace

In that moment, Dan was reminded why he wanted to write in the first place. It was the same reason anybody does anything -- to impress women.(Jeremy Goodwin, Sports Night)

The world can move or not by changing some words.

DONNA: "She said she knew it in her heart. Do you know how many times I've been wrong about things I knew in my heart?

By and large, the mission of any ghost is to offer humility. They point out what's important by mocking what is not.(Joshua Malina, Sports Night)

There (is) order and even great beauty in what looks like total chaos. If we look closely enough at the randomness around us, patterns will start to emerge.

It's an election year. We would prefer that voters didn't use common sense.

We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns.

I was sitting on a bench having a bagel, but from where I was both jogging and scullng looks good to me. -- Sam

PRESIDENT BARTLETT: "See how benevolent I can be when everybody just does what I tell them.

If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.

Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it's the only thing that ever has.