Sorkin Quotes & Sayings

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one — Aaron Sorkin

Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I'm going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig. — Aaron Sorkin

They beat up on a weakling, and that's all they did. The rest is smoke-filled, coffee-house crap. They tortured and tormented a weaker kid. And it wasn't just that night. Read the letters, it was eight months. And you know what? I'll bet it was his whole life. They beat him up, and they killed him. And why? Because he couldn't run very fast. I'm off duty now, don't ask me to be pals with these guys. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are. — Aaron Sorkin

I'm not interested in the difference between good and bad, I'm interested in the differences between good and great. — Aaron Sorkin

You don't need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor. — Aaron Sorkin

The rules are all in a sixty-four-page pamphlet by Aristotle called 'Poetics.' It was written almost three thousand years ago, but I promise you, if something is wrong with what you're writing, you've probably broken one of Aristotle's rules. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

When I was starting out, William Goldman took me under his wing, and he's still the person I show pages to. — 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. — Aaron Sorkin

Don't tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. — Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals. He's a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn't as smart as he thinks he is. — Alex Pareene

The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that's especially true of Shakespeare. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

We have a natural resentment toward government, which was how we were born — Aaron Sorkin

This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up. — 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

Film doesn't have to worry. Movies are awesome. There's no war going on, theaters aren't going to lose. — 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

Good writers borrow. The best writers steal. — 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

Liberals could live their whole lives never having to hear an actual conservative opinion other than the idiotic arguments written for conservative characters on Aaron Sorkin's little teleplays. — Ann Coulter

I've always loved the writing of Aaron Sorkin. He cleverly intersperses big issues alongside personal relationships. — Rupert Evans

The failure of Lehman may have allowed the government to do more to prop up the economy than it otherwise could. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

Wall Street is littered with clever plans to use financial instruments to change behavior - carbon trading, for example. Some have changed the world, and others failed miserably. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

My interactions with Sorkin were agonisingly weird. He is by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I had dinner with him and a few hours before I got an e-mail from his assistant saying, 'Sean, this does not need to be a long conversation. Aaron is only going to use it to win your trust.' — Sean Parker

By now, it seems as if everyone has already read Thomas L. Friedman's 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.' It changed the way we think about global business, competitiveness and the implication for far-flung economies, governments, education and more. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I was always one of those people who would watch the Super Bowl as much for the sports as I did for the ads. I was always just sort of fascinated by the fact that when you turn on the TV, there was motion, there was moving pictures on it. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of 20 year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world I don't know what the f^&k you're talking about. — Aaron Sorkin

I've always thought that there is a great female James Bond movie to be done. I'm not literally calling her Jane Bond, I mean, but a female secret agent. — Aaron Sorkin

There really isn't a story that you can't tell inside of it. It's very much a clearinghouse for anything that goes on in the world. So you're not at all limited. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life. — Aaron Sorkin

Every creator sets up their world differently. That's what's so amazing about someone like Aaron Sorkin and his writing. — Lesli Linka Glatter

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I think mostly about intention and obstacle somebody wants something somethings standing in their way of getting it. — Aaron Sorkin

You can't handle the truth . You can't handle the sad but historic reality. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — 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

I do not speak through my characters; it's not a ventriloquist act. — 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

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. — Aaron Sorkin

What's interesting, is that I've found that the more accomplished a director is, the more secure they are in giving direction that sounds incredibly unsophisticated. — Aaron Sorkin

Toby: All right. It couldn't have gone far, right?
Sam: No.
Toby: Somewhere in this building ... is our talent. — 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

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

And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe. — Aaron Sorkin

DONNA: She said she knew it in her heart. Do you know how many times I've been wrong about things I knew in my heart? — Aaron Sorkin

In truth, Wall Street is in for a radical makeover. Fewer people, lower margins, lower risk, lower compensation - and ultimately, fewer talented people. It is likely to change the culture of an industry that for nearly a century has been the money center of the world. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I think socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

I'm neither a millennial nor a hipster. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — 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

An artist's job is to captivate ... if we stumble into truth, we got lucky. — Aaron Sorkin

There's a good argument to be made that companies that are private, where they're run by partnerships, where everybody has true stake in them and they're not playing with other people's money, that by default it's a safer system, because you really have skin in the game. You really own the company. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

Corporate tax reform is nice in theory but tough in practice. It most likely requires lower tax rates and the closing of loopholes, which many companies are sure to fight. And whatever new, lower tax rate is determined, there will probably be another country willing to lower its rate further, creating a sad race to zero. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

As a dramatist, you're looking for points of friction ... — Aaron Sorkin

Whether it's 'The West Wing' or anything else, my first thought is always, 'What's a good story?' — 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

You are like seven of the strangest women I have ever met. — Aaron Sorkin

I'm a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage. — Aaron Sorkin

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do. — Aaron Sorkin

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else. — Aaron Sorkin

You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.' — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

I think Aaron Sorkin is like Shakespeare. When you go through it, there is a rhythm and clues all over the place of how it should be played. — Chris Messina

In truth, in the fairy-tale version of bailing out Lehman, the next domino, A.I.G., would have fallen even harder. If the politics of bailing out Lehman were bad, the politics of bailing out A.I.G. would have been worse. And the systemic risk that a failure of A.I.G. posed was orders of magnitude greater than Lehman's collapse. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

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

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. — Aaron Sorkin

Investors are sometimes too busy looking for profits to notice where the truth ends and the deception begins. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them. — Aaron Sorkin

My resting pulse as a writer is writing idealistically and romantically; aspirationally. My taste lies in quixotic heroes. — Aaron Sorkin

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president. — Aaron Sorkin

You trashed the law. But we understand. You're permitted. You have a greater responsibility than we can possibly fathom. You provide us with a blanket of freedom. We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns, and nothing's gonna stand in your way of doing it. Not Willy Santiago, not Dawson and Downey, not a thousand armies, not the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and not the Constitution of the United States. That's the truth, isn't it Colonel? I can handle it. — Aaron Sorkin

Perhaps something like Facebook couldn't have been invented by somebody who goes out five nights a week and has a ton of friends and makes friends really easily. — 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

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. — Aaron Sorkin

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. — Aaron Sorkin

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. — Aaron Sorkin

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder. — Aaron Sorkin

Live your life as if it was written by Aaron Sorkin — Jonah Bergan

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes ... Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense.
Sam Seaborne, West Wing — Aaron Sorkin

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night. — Aaron Sorkin

Conflict, when used as a device, makes for good television and bad journalism. — Aaron Sorkin

In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees. — Andrew Ross 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

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

I feel like I've had a number of roles in suits, which is hilarious to the people who know me, because it couldn't be further from who I am and what I wear. I think that Aaron Sorkin is, to a certain extent, responsible. — Clark Gregg

Everybody knows Aaron Sorkin's scripts. There's a huge amount of lines. There's a huge amount of interchange. You gotta do a lot of learning to be able to get it up to pace. — Danny Boyle

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.' — Aaron Sorkin

Don't try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don't ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers ... The most valuable thing you have is your own voice. — 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

The properties of people and the properties of character have almost nothing to do with each other. They really don't. I know it seems like they do because we look alike, but people don't speak in dialogue. Their lives don't unfold in a series of scenes that form a narrative arc. — Aaron Sorkin

Humans know when it's not a good story. Unless you do this for a living, you may not know exactly why you don't like a story, but you can't fool an audience ever. They know when you have it and they know when you don't. — Aaron Sorkin

Though Moneyball had the talents of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin going for it, they weren't baseball insiders. — Brad Pitt

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. — Aaron Sorkin

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? — Aaron Sorkin