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 want to be able to sing like Whitney Houston did.
I don't identify with her, but I highly admire Eleanor Roosevelt.
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.
The beauty of being a feminist is that you get to be whatever you want. And that's the point.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 binge pretty much everything. If I'm watching something, I'm bingeing it. I binged 'The Good Place' recently. 'Handmaid's Tale.'
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 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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
I can't change the past. It made me what I am.
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.
I would have 47 kids if I thought I could get away with it. I love children.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
'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.
Why should I dislike anything about my appearance? I came off the factory line this way. I am perfect.
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.
A hashtag is not a movement.
There's nothing wrong with being driven. And there's nothing wrong with putting yourself first to reach your goals.
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.'
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've spent more time on Hillary Clinton's Flickr page than any other human being on the planet.
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.'
I love having boyfriends. I love dating. I do not want a husband in my house.
I don't know why people don't feel like being positive is much more powerful than being negative.
