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.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Smile
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.Collection: Business
The beauty of being a feminist is that you get to be whatever you want. And that's the point.Collection: Beauty
I love having boyfriends. I love dating. I do not want a husband in my house.Collection: Dating
When people show you who they are, believe them. I carry that with me a lot. It has served me well.
I want to be able to sing like Whitney Houston did.
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.
I can't change the past. It made me what I am.
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.
'Grey's' has this universal, global thing to it. It works all over the world.
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.
Why should I dislike anything about my appearance? I came off the factory line this way. I am perfect.
'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.
I would have 47 kids if I thought I could get away with it. I love children.
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 identify with her, but I highly admire Eleanor Roosevelt.
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.
There's nothing wrong with being driven. And there's nothing wrong with putting yourself first to reach your goals.
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.
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 always said if I'm winning at one thing, I'm failing at another.
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.
People expect me to be, first and foremost, a storyteller. I lead by telling stories.
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.
When the press began asking me for interviews, I freaked out. My instinct is to hide.
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.
Most of the women I saw on TV didn't seem like people I actually knew. They felt like ideas of what women are.
I actually like being alone. I spend most evenings reading and taking long baths.
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.
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.
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.
I don't understand why people don't understand that the world of TV should look like the world outside of TV.
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.
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 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?
Let's be honest: I call myself a titan. I've got issues.
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.
I don't read work emails after 7 P.M. or on weekends.
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 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 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.
You don't necessarily have to watch something for 14 seasons. It's not necessarily the way everything's supposed to be.
The idea that the more you hide something, the more it becomes something that's supposed to feel shameful is very true.
My philosophy was always try to look like Whitney Houston at all times. That did not work out so well.
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.
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.
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.
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.'