Inattendance

TOBY ZIEGLER: Was there any press there tonight?
ACADEMIC: For a poetry lecture...?

- The West Wing, 3;17

On sincerity

I'm sure you've had to say things you haven't meant before. You've read friends'poetry...? Had girlfriends...?

- The West Wing

Substitution

Liz Weston: A nanny is not a substitute for a parent.
Jed Bartlet: I thought that's exactly what a nanny was...?

- The West Wing, 5;3

Bartlet v Nixon

In Series 3, episode 12 of The West Wing, Jed Bartlett gives his staff a motivational speech:

A president stood up. He said, "We will land a man on the moon in the next ten years." ... and we did it.

What Bartlett doesn't tell them is that President Nixon (for twas indeed he) was subsequently in receipt of a memo from speech-writer William Safire, outlining what he should say if that man did not come back. This surprisingly moving - if retrospectively-fictionalised - document can be read here, thanks to the splendid archival website Letters of Note.

Quality journalism (fictional)

We bring you breaking news. Once again, Leo McGarry is dead.

- The West Wing

Tobias Zachary Ziegler, speech writer

You wanna tempt the wrath of the... whatever, from high atop the... thing?!

- The West Wing

You're a writer? I'm a writer.

NASA spokesman: Look, I don't want to step on your toes, you don't want to step on mine. We're both writers.

Sam Seaborn: Yes, I suppose, if we broaden the definition to 'those who can spell'.

- The West Wing

[It has to be admitted that, later in this episode, Sam begins a sentence with 'me' when he quite clearly means 'I'. What can you do.]

Words and music (1)

Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music: they have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't.

- The West Wing, 3:6