Quotes from Jon Lovett

People say that making money in the content-media game is hard, and that is just, like, not my experience. It's super-confusing, 'cause everyone's like, 'Oh, how are you going to monetize?' It's easy: just start talking, and then money rolls in.

We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie; in industry-sponsored research; in social media's imitation of human connection; in legalese and corporate double-speak.

I am a deeply awkward person; I am not cool.

'1600 Penn' was a hit. It's 2018. Anything you want can be true.

It doesn't matter what the early votes look like. It doesn't matter what the polls look like. We can lose everything.

You look at what animates Democratic voters; you look at what animates Democratic politicians: it's health care. It's increasingly climate. It is wages and economic issues. It's issues around reproductive freedom and criminal justice reform and inequality.

Humor connects us, especially in politics. It's a way of surprising one another with shared context and experience.

I had never really planned on being a speechwriter.

They're the last human beings susceptible to human shame. Politicians are the only people left for whom, occasionally, shame hurts them. Everyone else, we've sort of done away with it as a concept, and we're hurtling through space like animals, basically.

I worked on one speech about the financial system that caused the Dow to drop, like, 200 points.

It's a reasonable thing to tell somebody, 'I've watched 70 hours of 'Game of Thrones.'' That's a totally normal, boring thing to say about yourself. But if you were like, 'I just spent 100 hours playing 'Skyrim,'' people think you're a weirdo.

The great thing about writing jokes for President Obama is that he is not afraid to tell jokes that are actually funny - and not just funny for a politician.

'Veep' is a great satire of democracy.

When in doubt, mock the powerful, not the powerless.

Whenever you're talking about using humor in politics or in a policy speech or in a serious moment, you're talking about using it as a tool to engage people. That's why putting a joke in a political speech is a luxury, and it is always a risk.

When I was a kid, all I knew about Michael Jackson was that he was crazy. He had a monkey named Bubbles and some kind of oxygen chamber, and he used to be black, but he made himself white, and he was nuts. That was Michael Jackson in full. Wacko Jacko.

It was awesome how supportive the White House was. It meant a lot to me that when I left, the people that I worked with - Jon Favreau and David Axelrod and others - really understood that this was something that I felt I held had to do.

I spent three years working at the White House and wanted to do something that wasn't about passing bills and resolutions.

The one thing I didn't want to do was a show about the White House. I was too close to it.

Most of my time at the White House, I wrote very unfunny speeches, but every year, I would work on the correspondents' dinner, which was a reminder of this other kind of writing that I loved to do.

A boring speech can be just a boring speech. But a speech with a joke that falls flat is awful. I hate it. That's why I think it's easier to hate a comedy. If a drama doesn't land, it's boring; if a joke doesn't land - you hate that.

Life tests our willingness, in ways large and small, to tell the truth.

'The West Wing' was an incredible, inspiring show - and one of the reasons I wanted to be a speechwriter.

There is that definition of leadership that says, 'Leadership is convincing people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done because you've made them believe it's the right thing to do.' And a great speech can do that.