A biography for Shonda Rhimeshasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“You don't necessarily have to watch something for 14 seasons. It's not necessarily the way everything's supposed to be.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I love having boyfriends. I love dating. I do not want a husband in my house.”
“'Grey's' has this universal, global thing to it. It works all over the world.”
“I want to be able to sing like Whitney Houston did.”
“Most of the women I saw on TV didn't seem like people I actually knew. They felt like ideas of what women are.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I can't change the past. It made me what I am.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”