Aaron Sorkin quotes
Born
June 9, 1961, New York City, U.S.
Occupation
Screenwriter, director.
Aaron Sorkin is an American screenwriter and director. He is known for his work on the television series The West Wing, for which he won multiple awards including the Primetime Emmy Award. In addition to his work in television, Sorkin has also written several films, including The Social Network (2010), which earned him an Academy Award.
Movies
Molly’s Game (2017)
The Social Network (2010)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)
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.
– Aaron Sorkin
I think socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.
– Aaron Sorkin
I like writing idealistically, romantically and swashbucklingly.
– Aaron Sorkin
Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.
– Aaron Sorkin
The Internet, in general, I find troubling. The anonymity has made us all meaner and dumber. This thing that was supposed to bring us closer together, I see it doing the opposite.
– Aaron Sorkin
I do not speak through my characters; it’s not a ventriloquist act.
– Aaron Sorkin
And my friends, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
– 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
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
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.
– 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
Decisions are made by those who show up.
– Aaron Sorkin
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
I feel like the better version of myself is on paper… I’d rather have people know me on paper.
– Aaron Sorkin
Television is a visual medium. You have to create some kind of visual interest. And it’s entertainment for your eyes.
– 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
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 had a lot of survival jobs. One was for the Witty Ditty singing-telegram company. I was in the red-and-white stripes with the straw boater hat and kazoo. Balloons. Even when you’re sleeping on a friend’s couch, you have to pay some kind of rent.
– Aaron Sorkin
It’s a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.
– Aaron Sorkin
– Aaron Sorkin
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it’s delayed. You can’t do that with television – you have air dates to meet.
– Aaron Sorkin
A news organization has a much different responsibility. I might not be telling you the whole story. I might not be telling you a story in a manner that is properly sophisticated.
– Aaron Sorkin
I’m crazy about ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I wouldn’t know how to write an episode of it.
– 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
I spend most of my days pacing around, muttering that I have no ideas, feeling like I’m walking a plank.
– Aaron Sorkin
I can’t remember my dreams more than a couple of seconds after I wake up. It’s frustrating because sometimes I dream that I’m watching a really good movie.
– 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
It’s nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There’s a difference.
– 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
The upside of web-based journalism is that everybody gets a chance. The downside is that everybody gets a chance.
– 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
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.’
– Aaron Sorkin
Writing never comes easy. The difference between Page 2 and Page Nothing is the difference between life and death.
– 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 all of the Apple products. Everything I’ve ever written, I’ve written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh – 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music.
– 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
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
I’m not sophisticated when it comes to politics, when it comes to journalism.
– Aaron Sorkin