Shonda Rhimes Quotes

You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.

The best stories are often true...The narrative of human life is most beautiful when told truthfully and without boundaries.

Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just... do. So you think, "I wish I could travel." Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I'm serious.

I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.

The only limit to success is your own imagination.

The expected is what keeps us steady. It's the unexpected that changes our lives forever.

Cynicism is a choice. Optimism is a better choice.

Nobody got anything great by playing it safe.

Ditch the dream and be a doer.

Boundaries don't keep other people out, they fence you in.

Mother is a verb, not a noun.

When people show you who they are, believe them. I carry that with me a lot. It has served me well.

Mother is not a title. Mother is a verb. It is not who you are. It's what you do.

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

You are not alone. You are seen. I am with you. You are not alone.

Making it through the ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman's footprints.

My parents created a world in which the only ­barrier to your success is your own imagination.

A hashtag is not helping... A hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It's a hashtag.

I remember saying, very almost jokingly, I'm going to take over the world through television, that's my plan. And I said it to my agent, and I said it to my friends, and I said it to myself.

Ive 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 you help make people healthier, it makes the nation healthier, it makes the world healthier, it makes the economy healthier.

I happen to like debating, and I like to debate like a lawyer, and I can argue any points to death, and I will.

Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.

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 cannot keep track and lots of great shows go unnoticed.

I think it's sad, and weird, and strange that [race in casting] is still a thing. It's 2013. Somebody else needs to get their act together.

I was 4 and dictating stories into a tape recorder, and my mom typed them up.

I am terrible with examples. I can never think of them when anybody asks for an example.

Nobody ever asks a man how he gets stuff done. Nobody asks a man how he finds balance.

There is no longer one way to consume TV. Some shows you want to watch live, some shows you only discover through streaming, some shows you just feel you need to DVR.

Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.

It is time to stop standing at the edges of rooms. Hugging the walls. Living in my head. Wishing I had something to say.

I grew up with a front-row seat to what a happy, healthy marriage looks like. Never perfect, constantly evolving, always united.