Aaron Sorkin

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.'

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.

I feel like the better version of myself is on paper... I'd rather have people know me on paper.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

A hero would die for his country, but he'd much rather live for it.

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

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.