Top 165 Quotes & Sayings by Shonda Rhimes
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American producer Shonda Rhimes.
Last updated on September 10, 2024.
I'm just obsessed with 'Game of Thrones,' especially Arya Stark. And I love 'Orange is the New Black,' although I just want to inhale that all at once. I keep trying to stretch it out, but it's so hard.
My worst trait is that I'm an introvert. When I've led stuff, the hardest thing for me to overcome has been my natural desire to run and hide. I'm very proud of the fact that I have been able to do that.
Having a strong sense of self is fundamental to you, no matter what you're doing. I don't care if you're a stay at home mom raising kids or if you're the CEO of a corporation. It's really important for your survival.
Disney has made $2 billion on 'Grey's Anatomy.' I don't have $2 billion.
The entire world is skewed from the white male perspective. If you're a woman, they have to say it's a female-driven comedy. If it's a comedy with Latinos in it, it's a Latino comedy. 'Normal' is white male, and I find that to be shocking and ridiculous.
I like people with their own opinions, and I like people who argue with me. It's very exhausting to be in a room full of people who just nod and smile.
I have so much going on inside my head in terms of writing, there's such a large space in my life taken up by that. I can't imagine it being taken up by a husband and children and writing, and everything getting its due. I don't believe there is room for all of it. I really don't.
You can't tell stories and really walk in someone's shoes and not have a love for them, even if they're doing horrible things.
I think I'm most proud of the fact that I have figured out how to exist as both a creative person and artist, and a businesswoman and manager. Because those two things do not go together.
I actually like being alone. I spend most evenings reading and taking long baths.
When people show you who they are, believe them. I carry that with me a lot. It has served me well.
For me, beauty is me at the top of my game, going as hard as I can, without fear of what anyone else thinks. Believing in yourself when nobody else is believing in you is half the battle about anything.
My daughter thinks my shows suck.
My philosophy was always try to look like Whitney Houston at all times. That did not work out so well.
I don't understand why people don't understand that the world of TV should look like the world outside of TV.
Calling a show a 'guilty pleasure' is like saying 'I'm embarrassed to say I watch it but I can't stop.' That's not a compliment.
'Scandal' has always lived in this dark place with this idea that Washington is filled with this underbelly of monsters, that if the real world understood how dark, twisted and corrupt it really was, they would never agree with our government or want to be part of it. It's been kind of fun to live in that world. It felt like a fictional world.
When the press began asking me for interviews, I freaked out. My instinct is to hide.
This is going to sound crazy, but there was a period of time where on TLC they would show those surgeries - like a woman had a 90-pound tumor, or they separated these twins. And my sister and I - she lived in Ohio when I lived in California - would watch them together on the phone.
A hashtag is not a movement.
When I'm hard at work, when I'm deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyonce. And it is all of those things at the same time.
I keep getting asked how I write about such smart, strong women, and my response is, what's the alternative? Weak, stupid women? They're just normal people, not role models - if you're aspiring to be like any of them, something's a little bit wrong. You may want to dress like one or have her job, but do not aspire to be her!
These days, I feel like a chunky spy in a thinner world. Strangers tell fat jokes in front of me. Jokes not meant for me. But... completely for the woman I used to be 150 pounds ago. The woman I could be again one day. The woman I will always be inside. Because being thinner doesn't make you a different person. It just makes you thinner.
I don't know that I think women have to throw out the fairy tale ending. I just think they have to decide what their fairy tale ending is - and not go with the standard one that everyone's told them they're supposed to have.
Most of the women I saw on TV didn't seem like people I actually knew. They felt like ideas of what women are.
No one's body is up for comment. No matter how small, how curvy, how round, how flat. If you love you, then I love you.
You have to have more people who don't look like you in the writers room. I try to have some people who don't look like me in my writers room. I think it's important to have a group of voices, of people who can dissent.
I always like to say our shows should be something that, you know, before 10 o'clock, if your kid wanders into the room, they should be able to glance at the TV, watch what's happening, but not quite know what's happening. That's always my standard.
I've learned this is a very long marriage doing a television show. I like the people that I work with to be people I enjoy, so you want to cast people who are as excited and enthusiastic as you are.
The way I write my shows, every character is its own organic thing. No character has a life at all until I see it played by somebody.
We have people say, 'There's not enough women writers.' I have a writers room that is almost nothing but women over at 'Grey's Anatomy.'
I really do feel like the work and time we spend avoiding having difficult conversations is so much more wasteful and painful and time-consuming than actually having the difficult conversation.
I want to be able to sing like Whitney Houston did.
The secret sauce of the business that I can offer is my creativity, and in order to keep my creativity alive and fresh, I have to pretend that no one is watching the show, that there are no audiences, there are no ratings; I'm just telling a story.
My poor children have been the subject of all of my experiments. We're still doing what I call 'Amish summers' where I turn off all electronics and pack away all their computers and stuff and watch them scream for a while until they settle down into, like, an electronic-free summer.
I say it in the writers' room all the time: My black is not your black. What's terrifying is that, just the same way we've all accepted that normal is white, everybody seems to buy into the idea that there's only one way to be black or one way to be Hispanic. That's as damaging as anything else.
I spent a lot of times sitting in big rooms full of a lot of men and executives thinking, 'What would Oprah say right now?' and trying to channel that as hard as I could. And mostly that was just about having the confidence. If this woman did it, it can be done. And there's no reason for anybody to stop you.
Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.
Let's be honest: I call myself a titan. I've got issues.
Frankly, the idea that we need to be beautiful, if you really think about it, it's odd. But if you can turn it inward and see yourself as beautiful, that's what changes the world.
What I found fascinating for me was, I've never gotten so much approval and accolades and warmth and congratulations as when I had a guy on my arm that people thought I was going to marry. It was amazing. I mean, nobody congratulated me that hard when I had my three children.
To lead or to parent means not being liked sometimes.
I've always said if I'm winning at one thing, I'm failing at another.
There's nothing wrong with being driven. And there's nothing wrong with putting yourself first to reach your goals.
There are stories to be told that are still untold and characters to be portrayed that haven't been portrayed correctly. So there's work to be done.
Work doesn't work without play.
I don't get to watch a lot of TV, mainly because I'm busy working. And I pretty much try not to watch very much television at all, even American television, until I'm done with a season, because things start to creep into my head otherwise.
A woman who doesn't want to have kids is sort of a mystery to people. That's a question they're asked the minute they get married, it's a question they're asked constantly, 'Don't you want to have kids?' And I feel like that's completely unfair.
I don't read work emails after 7 P.M. or on weekends.
A movie is a movie is a movie. But it has to have an adjective in front of it if it's not a white guy's movie.
If we're not shooting, if we're not filming, if you're not standing on the soundstage, turn off your phone and go live your life.
I don't care what color you are, what size you are, where you're from. It is disturbing that there's an idea that only tall, thin, willowy, size 0 women are attractive - even for the tall, thin, willowy, size 0 woman! We all should get to feel like there's something powerful and beautiful about who we are.
I think my goal is to find a way to spend all of my time writing. I mean, sort of; true success is I'm doing nothing but writing if I do my job correctly.
There is a part of me that's oblivious. People always ask me, 'What obstacles have you faced?' and I always think, 'What are you talking about?' Whether or not there were obstacles, I never saw obstacles. It's never occurred to me that I wasn't good enough for something.
You don't necessarily have to watch something for 14 seasons. It's not necessarily the way everything's supposed to be.
The beauty of being a feminist is that you get to be whatever you want. And that's the point.
A lot of people think that they are leaders just because they have been placed in charge of something - and you're not.
The idea that the more you hide something, the more it becomes something that's supposed to feel shameful is very true.
I don't know why people don't feel like being positive is much more powerful than being negative.
I like working more than I like being at home. Facing that fact is incredibly difficult to handle, because what kind of person likes working more than being at home?
Related Authors
Bhushan Kumar Quotes
Indian
Producer
Declan Donnelly Quotes
English
Producer
Ekta Kapoor Quotes
Indian
Producer
Gauri Khan Quotes
Indian
Producer
J. Michael Straczynski Quotes
American
Producer
James Wan Quotes
Australian
Producer
Jason Blum Quotes
American
Producer
Jimmy Iovine Quotes
American
Producer
Julie Plec Quotes
American
Producer
Noah Hawley Quotes
American
Producer
Noel Edmonds Quotes
English
Producer
Paul Heyman Quotes
American
Producer
Roger Ross Williams Quotes
American
Producer
Samuel Goldwyn Quotes
American
Producer
Travis Knight Quotes
American
Producer
Troy Carter Quotes
American
Producer