Aaron Sorkin Quotes

I essentially have always directed everything on my TV show without using that title; I edited and wrote all my stuff.

One of the greatest things about 'Continuum' is how great the writing is; our writing room is one of the most talented ones I've ever had. It really helps me as far as character development because they paint a very descriptive picture of who the characters are while still letting us have freedom to put in our own ideas.

I don't know what's coming down the pike in 'Gotham.' Part of me goes, 'Man, I just wish I could be in the writers' room. Do you need someone to make you guys coffee?' I just want to be a part of the flow of it.

You're thinking about the physical consequences about what you're writing if you're going to direct it. If you're not going to direct it, then it's somebody else's problem, and they'll solve it.

Closest to my heart is probably 'Toast of London' because I came up with the character, based on a bunch of people I worked with in the industry. And Channel 4 didn't mess with it. Head to screen, it was exactly as I wanted it.

I was a playwright who was still learning the ropes when Starz took a chance on me to create and showrun 'Vida.' They nurtured and supported me during every step of the strenuous process, and that is a debt that cannot be repaid.

At our best, it's a good experience but we do 22 episodes a year, so there are some clunkers.

Because I work in television, I always knew that I loved working with writers. It's very collaborative. You're always in a room full of writers.

The director in TV and the writer and the creator are working very much hand in hand.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

My approach to 'Star Trek' was, 'I know science fiction, and I know screen writing.' That was very arrogant of me, but you really need to be a little bit arrogant to think that what you have to say is good enough to justify the expense of hundreds of thousands - now millions of dollars - to make an episode of the TV show.

I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.

When you're making TV, the last thing you want to do is watch TV. It's too much.

One of the things that's fun about TV is it grows, and you set goals and aim towards stuff, and one of the writers has an idea, and you say, 'Ooh, that's so much cooler. Let's do that instead.' It's so much more fluid and organic that way, and that's the most fun part about it.

In television writing, even if you're running the writers room, it's a writers room.

With TV, your first draft just doesn't matter. It's a skeleton, and then there's draft after draft after draft, and so many other factors influence it. It's just a whole different kind of storytelling.

It's pretty surreal to be doing a show on HBO with pals.

'The Fosters' is such a fun show to shoot, and I always look forward to getting the new script because we keep pushing the boundaries.

We got spoiled with 'Friday Night Lights.' Not every show is like that, and on other shows, if you try to bring that same truth or that same approach, the system of television doesn't always allow for that level of collaboration, which is unfortunate because the work would be richer.

On 'The Deuce,' the writers' room gets like group therapy.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

It's a very different thing when you're creating the world as opposed to when you're just part of the world. I love the detail of it, the problem-solving of it, and I love working with actors.

The writing of 'The Ladykillers' was fun. But once it goes out of your hands it's not fun, 'especially for someone who is used to being hands-on like me.