Shonda Rhimes Quotes

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?

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

'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.

- Shonda Rhimes

My philosophy was always try to look like Whitney Houston at all times. That did not work out so well.

- Shonda Rhimes

I want to be able to sing like Whitney Houston did.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.'

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

There's nothing wrong with being driven. And there's nothing wrong with putting yourself first to reach your goals.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.'

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.'

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

The idea that the more you hide something, the more it becomes something that's supposed to feel shameful is very true.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

Most of the women I saw on TV didn't seem like people I actually knew. They felt like ideas of what women are.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

I actually like being alone. I spend most evenings reading and taking long baths.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

Disney has made $2 billion on 'Grey's Anatomy.' I don't have $2 billion.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

My daughter thinks my shows suck.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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!

- Shonda Rhimes

When the press began asking me for interviews, I freaked out. My instinct is to hide.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.'

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

The beauty of being a feminist is that you get to be whatever you want. And that's the point.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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?

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

I don't understand why people don't understand that the world of TV should look like the world outside of TV.

- Shonda Rhimes

You don't necessarily have to watch something for 14 seasons. It's not necessarily the way everything's supposed to be.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

I don't read work emails after 7 P.M. or on weekends.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

I don't know why people don't feel like being positive is much more powerful than being negative.

- Shonda Rhimes

A lot of people think that they are leaders just because they have been placed in charge of something - and you're not.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

When people show you who they are, believe them. I carry that with me a lot. It has served me well.

- Shonda Rhimes

Let's be honest: I call myself a titan. I've got issues.

- Shonda Rhimes

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.

- Shonda Rhimes

To lead or to parent means not being liked sometimes.

- Shonda Rhimes

I've always said if I'm winning at one thing, I'm failing at another.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes

A hashtag is not a movement.

- Shonda Rhimes

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

- Shonda Rhimes