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" 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. "

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" 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

Control

Choices

Opinion

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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 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.' "

" 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

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

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

Shonda Rhimes

Understand

Why

" 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'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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" A hashtag is not a movement. "

Shonda Rhimes

Movement

" 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. "

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

Shonda Rhimes

First

People

" 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

Lost

People

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "