Top 165 Quotes & Sayings by Shonda Rhimes - Page 2

I'd split up with a boyfriend and gone to Vermont to stare at my navel, and then 9/11 happened, and I spent days being scared of what was happening in the world. So I made a list of all the things I wanted to do, and at the top was adopt a baby. Nine months and two days later, I brought my daughter home.

Italy during Shakespeare's time had citizens of all cultures and colors. To pretend that it did not is ignorance. And I don't waste my time on ignorance.

In my house, you got in trouble if you didn't speak up. My mom would be furious at us if we went to school and behaved nicely if someone treated us badly. If we got in trouble because we had yelled at them or told them that they were wrong, my mother would be like, 'Good job.'

Most people, I think, have accepted that it's not up to them to control other people's choices, except, it seems, when it comes to Washington, D.C., where everyone has an opinion about people's uteruses.

I would have 47 kids if I thought I could get away with it. I love children.

I'm not a person who's interested in getting involved with politics just to get involved with them, and I don't need to.

Sometimes people don't want to be empowered because they are afraid of being the person to make the decisions.

I don't ever approach anything from the issue first, so I can't tell you that I've thought about tackling universal health care. I'd have to have some great story I'd want to tell, and then universal health care would become part of the way to tell that story.

I think any time you allow someone to see themselves reflected in another person on screen, there's validation there. It's hard to feel strong and sure of yourself when you're 15, but if you can turn on your television or computer and see someone who makes you feel like, 'I can be that strong...' there's validation there.

I don't identify with her, but I highly admire Eleanor Roosevelt.

After I lost weight, I discovered that people found me valuable. Worthy of conversation. A person one could look at. A person one could compliment. A person one could admire. A person.

My 15-year-old threw open the door the other day to my room and screamed, ''Freaks and Geeks' only has one season? Can they make another one?' And I tried to explain to her that it happened a long time ago. She didn't understand that because it felt very relevant to her.

Most writing staffs have this crazy high turnover, and then everyone's really miserable, and I don't understand that. I don't know why you don't grow people to then be able to take over as you. That's how I can have more shows.

I can't change the past. It made me what I am.

There's always women of many different races on my shows, and there are always women who look many different ways, but there is still a size thing in this industry. It's hard. I mean to have to say, 'I want a larger woman to be an actor on my shows.' Or, 'Find me a larger woman,' is almost insulting to me.

No matter how you feel about social media, you can't deny the giant that is Facebook.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

I love having boyfriends. I love dating. I do not want a husband in my house.

Why should I dislike anything about my appearance? I came off the factory line this way. I am perfect.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

My parents are professors; they're intellectual. I spent a lot of time reading books. To me, everyone always looks like they do in your imagination. And in my imagination, the characters always looked like me.

There have to be practical steps. There's no point in holding out for a magic door because there are no magic doors. You can dream your life away or actually do what you dream of doing. That's the most valuable advice I can give.

I never, ever pay attention to the ratings. I stopped paying attention to the ratings somewhere around season two or three of 'Grey's.' It's something I have no control over, so I don't even pay attention.

I have all these friends who just love therapy, and I always say the reason that I'm absolutely not in therapy is because then I wouldn't have anything to write.

I don't think that my job requires me to be competitive at all. I'm in my office by myself, or I'm in my writers' room with my people. I've chosen a job in which there's no competition allowed. It's probably best for everyone.

You could be a woman in Alabama who's a conservative Christian, or you could be a total crunchy-granola woman in Seattle and 20 years old, and both of you would watch Oprah.

What's great about Netflix is that everything is kind of instantaneous, and it goes around the world instantly. Everything is released at once. The format can be a little bit whatever you want.

I actually really love Twitter - I used to feel angry and insulted when people criticised me or the shows, but now I don't take it too seriously. What I do love is that there's this great direct line to fans.

There's racist casting, and there is normal casting. Normal casting, to me, is a process that strives for representation and, in many cases, strives to simply portray the world as it actually is instead of as falsely non-inclusive. And sadly, sometimes that involves removing the whitewash that exists on history.

Getting on a plane and discovering that your seat belt won't fit around you was a moment of extreme horror. It was very hard to ignore.

I believe that good television should be challenging and frustrating and maddening and thrilling. If you just want to see people who look like you and think like you and do what you would do in any given situation, you'd have to stop looking at TV and start looking in a mirror. But would that be as much fun?

I've spent more time on Hillary Clinton's Flickr page than any other human being on the planet.

I binge pretty much everything. If I'm watching something, I'm bingeing it. I binged 'The Good Place' recently. 'Handmaid's Tale.'

I am never worried that I'm not gonna get my work done. I was the kid who got straight As and was a little too intense in school. Like, I am a perfectionist, and I am going to sit at the front of the class with my hand raised.

When you help make people healthier, it makes the nation healthier; it makes the world healthier. It makes the economy healthier.

People expect me to be, first and foremost, a storyteller. I lead by telling stories.

My father used to say to me, 'The only limit to your success is your own imagination.' I actually believed that - like, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I might not be an Olympic figure skater.

Shondaland is my company. I run that mother. I am in charge. I am the leader. It's fantastic. It's also really hard. As it should be.

I truly feel like my job is to make the shows. That's what I'm paid to do. It's somebody else's job to market them, and it's somebody else's job to pay attention to the ratings, because if I paid attention to all that, my head would explode.

I do say all I've ever written about is being alone. And most people take that as, 'Oh, that's so sad.' And I always say, 'No. No, all I ever write about is being alone, and sometimes that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.'

I've never personally had to use a Planned Parenthood. But I have many friends who have and do and did, and I think it's important that that access be there for everyone.

I don't think of myself as a television producer. Obviously, that's crazy. Because I should. That's what I do. But I don't actually see that as my job. It's why my business cards say 'storyteller.'

I think that women are raised to believe that they're supposed to want certain things, and so you feel like you're supposed to apologize when you don't want those things.

I think the point of our country, our planet, the reason we're all here, one of the best things that we can do is be concerned about something even when it doesn't concern us. That's the whole point.

That first year I was doing 'Grey's,' I didn't know it was possible to fire the creator of a show off their own show, so I didn't behave like somebody who was afraid of being fired.

I have found that if I spend the first hour of my day at home, I get more done, and less people steal my time.

'Grey's' has this universal, global thing to it. It works all over the world.

I'm one of those people, since I was 5, I could tell you I was going to have kids. I could tell you I was going to have three. I could tell you they were going to be girls. But I have never wanted to get married. I never played bride. I was never interested. I don't know what it is; I never wanted to get married.

My favorite thing to do is rip the covers off a script when reading for writers to hire and make everybody read without names on the covers of the script. I can't tell you how many times my writers, women and men, will pick people of color and women much more often than they would with a cover on the script.

I learned how to write TV by writing 'Grey's Anatomy.'

It's important to have people who are absolutely willing to say you're wrong or who have a totally different perspective than you do on everything. Fresh ideas are hard to come by, and good ones are even harder.

I've been a writer since I was a kid. I've been a writer since I was, you know, dictating stories into a tape deck and trying to get my mom to type them up - when I was really, really little.

I work for ABC. If the thing that ABC is paying me for is storytelling - not to make sure that a costume is exactly right or all those other things - then it is up to me to find the most creative space possible so that that function of my job can happen.

The expected is what keeps us steady. It's the unexpected that changes our lives forever.

Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It's hard work that makes things happen. It's hard work that creates change.

Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you're paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn't matter. You don't have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new.

You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.

The best stories are often true...The narrative of human life is most beautiful when told truthfully and without boundaries.

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them

The only limit to success is your own imagination.