Born on June 9th

"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."

"Decisions are made by those who show up."

"As long as you keep one foot in the real world while the other foot's in a fairy tale, that fairy tale is going to seem kind of attainable."

"I am all for everyone having a voice; I just don't think everyone has earned the microphone. And that's what the Internet has done."

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

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

"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."

"The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules."

"Our responsibility is to captivate you for however long we've asked for your attention. That said, there is tremendous drama to be gotten from the great, what you would say, heavy issues."

"I think socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality."

"The Internet, in general, I find troubling. The anonymity has made us all meaner and dumber. This thing that was supposed to bring us closer together, I see it doing the opposite."

"I'm crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I wouldn't know how to write an episode of it."

"I've loved every minute I've spent in television. And I've had much more failure, as traditionally measured, than success in television. I've done four shows, and only one of them was the 'West Wing.'"

"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."

"'Molly's Game' was a true story about a remarkable young woman named Molly Bloom. She was this close to going to the Olympics; she was ranked third in North America in women's moguls."

"Television is a visual medium. You have to create some kind of visual interest. And it's entertainment for your eyes."

"Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death."

"I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue."

"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."

"All my heroes wore coats and ties to work. What happened to men wearing hats? Maybe I should bring back hats."

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

"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."

"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."

"I have all of the Apple products. Everything I've ever written, I've written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh - 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music."

"First scenes are super-important to me. I'll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway."

"The upside of web-based journalism is that everybody gets a chance. The downside is that everybody gets a chance."

"I get the 'The New York Times' and 'Los Angeles Times' thrown at my door every morning. I'll read the front page of 'The New York Times,' then the op-eds, then scan the arts section and then the sports section. Then I do the same with the 'L.A. Times.'"

"And my friends, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

"Heroes in drama are people who try hard to reach a virtuous ideal. And whether they succeed or fail really doesn't matter - it's the trying that counts."

"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."