‘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. – Aaron Sorkin
I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I’m walking a plank. – Aaron Sorkin
Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good. – Aaron Sorkin
You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we’re presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated – not nearly as black and white as we’re led to believe. – Aaron Sorkin
There are some screw-ups headed your way. I wish I could tell you that there was a trick to avoiding the screw-ups… but they’re coming for ya. It’s a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that’s especially true of Shakespeare. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
When I create a TV show, it’s so that I can write it. I’m not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people – experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they’re not writing scripts. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
Don’t ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world, it’s the only thing that ever has. – Aaron Sorkin
All my heroes wore coats and ties to work. What happened to men wearing hats? Maybe I should bring back hats. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
We’re about to shoot an episode on Air Force One, for instance, and we’re going to take liberties, small liberties, with Air Force One, as we take small liberties with our White House set. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
If you lined up 10 writers and asked them to write a movie about Steve Jobs, you’d get 10 very different movies. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
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. – Aaron Sorkin
