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

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.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

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.

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

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.

...after much practice and struggle, you come to feel for yourself that enlightenment is not only possible, but in process.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book -and does

You have to throw yourself away when you write.

What doesn't bend, breaks.

You can't pay for healthcare if we're sending a trillion dollars a year to dictators.

The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him who does not search it out, darkness; to him who does, infinity.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.

A crown, a throne could not be based on the not too very solid foundation of blood.

When you feel abandoned by God yet continue to trust him in spite of your feelings, you worship him in the deepest way.

Before now poetry has taken notice Of wars, and what are wars but politics Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?