- Black And White
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- Nov 07, 2020
Aaron Sorkin Quotes
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Important
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Story
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- Nov 07, 2020
There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited.
- Kings
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Business
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.
- Getting
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- Nov 07, 2020
Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.
- Business Model
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Made
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- Nov 07, 2020
Decisions are made by those who show up.
- Change The World
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- Nov 07, 2020
Don't ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it's the only thing that ever has.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Nothin
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- Nov 07, 2020
And my friends, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Internet
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Fun
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- Nov 07, 2020
I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.
- Control
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- Nov 07, 2020
I don't have a great instrument. I don't have the kind of ungodly control over my voice and body that great actors have. And I've worked with enough great actors to know that I'm not one.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
My parents took me to see plays, starting from when I was very little. Oftentimes, I was too young to understand. I don't know what my parents were thinking - 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' when I was eight years old, that kind of thing. So lots of times, I didn't understand what was going on, but I just loved the sound of dialogue.
- Feeling
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm very physical. When I'm writing, I'm playing all the parts; I'm saying the lines out loud, and if I get excited about something - which doesn't happen very often when I'm writing, but it's the greatest feeling when it does - I'll be out of the chair and walking around, and if I'm at home, I'll find myself two blocks from my house.
- Loved
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.'
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.
- Look
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- Nov 07, 2020
There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.
- Ideas
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- Nov 07, 2020
I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I'm walking a plank.
- Find
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- God
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm more comfortable writing traditional protagonists. But 'Steve Jobs' and 'The Social Network' have antiheroes. I like to write antiheroes as if they're making their case to God about why they should be allowed into heaven. I have to find something in that character that is like me and write to that.
- Character
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- Nov 07, 2020
The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don't. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don't speak in dialogue. Their lives don't unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc.
- Nov 07, 2020
The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that's especially true of Shakespeare.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've got plenty of quirks. I go to an office early in the morning. Early in the morning is really good writing time. I take anywhere between six to eight showers a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a germaphobe: it's all about a fresh start.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.
- Alone
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- Nov 07, 2020
Not all paintings are abstract; they're not all Jackson Pollock. There's value in a photograph of a man alone on a boat at sea, and there is value in painting of a man alone on a boat at sea. In the painting, the painting has more freedom to express an idea, more latitude in being able to elicit certain emotion.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me. So when David Fincher comes along and wants to direct 'The Social Network,' when Bennett Miller comes along and wants to direct 'Moneyball,' or when Danny Boyle wants to direct 'Jobs'? Hallelujah. I want them directing it.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
With 'The Social Network,' I got into it at first because frankly I thought there was a cool courtroom drama to be had with the intellectual properties. And then what further drew me in was that the most extraordinary social networking device ever created was created by the world's most antisocial person. I liked that story.
- Doing
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- Nov 07, 2020
While I was doing 'The Newsroom,' I always had the news on on different networks on different TVs around my house and around my office.
- First Thing
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- Nov 07, 2020
The first thing I wrote was a one-act play that got accepted at a one-act play festival, and I was in it along with Nathan Lane and a couple of other very good actors.
- Camera
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Nov 07, 2020
I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
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. Judd Apatow is fantastic at it. But as an audience member, I like the sound of something that's been written - I like it to sound written.
- Eyes
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- Nov 07, 2020
Television is a visual medium. You have to create some kind of visual interest. And it's entertainment for your eyes.
- Government
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- Nov 07, 2020
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?
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Night
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- Nov 07, 2020
I find television, and particularly live television, very romantic: the idea that there is this small group of people, way up high, in a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, beaming this signal out into the night.
- Nor
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm neither a millennial nor a hipster.
- Memory
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Education
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness and demonize education and intellect. And I'm giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now.
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- First
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- Nov 07, 2020
Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?'
- I Am
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- Nov 07, 2020
I am uncomfortable talking about the things that I write. It seems unseemly to me. I have no problem at all when I see anybody else talking about the same project, but I feel my work should speak for itself.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
My way of getting the best from people on a set is to notice their work, to make every prop master, every seamstress, part of 'The Newsroom' or 'The West Wing' or 'Steve Jobs.'
- Politics
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, when it comes to journalism.
- Great Country
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think I would have done very well as a writer in the Forties. I think the last time America was a great country was then or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.
- Internet
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was starting out, William Goldman took me under his wing, and he's still the person I show pages to.
- Different
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- Nov 07, 2020
If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you'd get 10 very different movies.
- Hat
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president.
- Home
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- Nov 07, 2020
'Steve Jobs' is my seventh movie. I believe, if you added them up, I don't think there is more than a total of 10 minutes that takes place in a person's home. They're all in offices, courtrooms, laboratories, things like that.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Heroes
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- Nov 07, 2020
All my heroes wore coats and ties to work. What happened to men wearing hats? Maybe I should bring back hats.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
Everything can be going well, but if I'm not writing, I'm not happy. When I'm writing well, I'm like a different person.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.
- Front Page
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.'
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm not on Facebook, and I don't tweet, but I know plenty of people who love both.
- Everybody
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- Nov 07, 2020
The upside of web-based journalism is that everybody gets a chance. The downside is that everybody gets a chance.
- New
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
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.
- Character
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- Nov 07, 2020
A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.
- Crazy
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I wouldn't know how to write an episode of it.
- Always
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've always thought that there is a great female James Bond movie to be done. I'm not literally calling her Jane Bond, I mean, but a female secret agent.
- Father
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- Nov 07, 2020