Aaron Sorkin Quotes
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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.
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Decisions are made by those who show up.
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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.
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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.
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I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue.
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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.
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I like writing idealistically, romantically and swashbucklingly.
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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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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.
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I'm not on Facebook, and I don't tweet, but I know plenty of people who love both.
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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.
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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.
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I'm neither a millennial nor a hipster.
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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.
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And my friends, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
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When a movie is being rolled out, the studio publicists and all our individual publicists get together and come up with bullet points and talking points - 'Make sure you stay away from this,' and 'Don't say that quite that way, because that quote can be taken out of context,' and that kind of thing.
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I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, when it comes to journalism.
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Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.
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Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.
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'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.
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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.
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Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?'
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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.
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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.'