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“You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.'”
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“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.”
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“I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.”
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“I think that if I couldn't write, I would be unemployable.”
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“The Monica Lewinsky scandal was happening at the very time I was writing the West Wing pilot and it was hard, at least for Americans, to look at the White House and think of anything but a punch line. Plus a show about politics, a show that took place in Washington, had just never worked before in American television. So the show was delayed for a year.”
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“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.”
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“I love writing. I'm not particularly comfortable in the actual world - I'm much more comfortable on the page. So if I could have a life where I could just slip the pages under the door and somebody would slip me a meal back, then that would be perfect for me.”
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“My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes.”
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“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.”
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“With a television series, there's a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you're not writing well.”
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“Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.”
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“Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.”
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“I think it's up to writers to write stuff that is compelling enough that people want to watch.”
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“Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.”
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“When I feel that something I'm writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren't good are completely manageable. If it's not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn't be happy about it”
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“When you're writing a movie or a play and writing isn't going well, which is for me the normal condition - it's an exceptional day when suddenly I've got something and it's going well - you can call the studio or the producer or whoever is waiting for it and say, "I know I said I was going to have it in by the end of the summer.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me.”
