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" 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. "

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" 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

Own

Opinions

" 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. "

" 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

Reading

Parents

" Work doesn't work without play. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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

Deep

Work

" 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

Ideas

Women

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" A hashtag is not a movement. "

Shonda Rhimes

Movement

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

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

" 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 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

Pay

Job

" 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

I Love You

You

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

Shonda Rhimes

Want

Houston

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

" 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

Look

Say

" 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

Limit

Success

" 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. "