Top 120 Shonda Rhimes Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Being a mother is incredibly important. To the naysayers, I growl, do not diminish it by calling it a job.”

— Shonda Rhimes

52. “Every “yes” changes something in me. Every “yes” is a bit more transformative. Every “yes” sparks some new phase of revolution.”

— Shonda Rhimes

53. “Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it.”

— Shonda Rhimes

54. “Marriage is a financial partnership. Marriage has nothing to do with love. Love is a choice we can make every day.”

— Shonda Rhimes

55. “Losing yourself does not happen all at once. Losing yourself happens one no at a time.”

— Shonda Rhimes

56. “Sometimes the toilet paper does not win. Sometimes a broke woman needs the red wine more.”

— Shonda Rhimes

57. “Her toolbox is full. She has learned to not let go of the pieces of herself that she needs in order to be what someone else wants. She’s learned not to compromise. She’s learned not to settle. She’s learned, as difficult as it is, how to be her own sun.”

— Shonda Rhimes

58. “I’ve started to think we are like mirrors. What you are gets reflected back to you. What you see in yourself, you may see in others, and what others see in you, they may see in themselves.”

— Shonda Rhimes

59. “I felt bolstered by their friendship. By their loyalty. By the idea that I had these amazing friends, these members of my tribe, these gladiators at my back.”

— Shonda Rhimes

60. “Badassery, I’m discovering, is a new level of confidence – in both yourself and those around you.”

— Shonda Rhimes

61. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that food doesn’t work. Anyone who tells you that food doesn’t work is either stupid or a liar or has never had food before. You can tell them I said so. It works. Putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn’t work its slutty, gluttonous, more-is-more magic, everyone in America would be Angelina Jolie thin. No one would drive-thru. No one would sprinkles or pinkberry or any of it.”

— Shonda Rhimes

62. “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.”

— Shonda Rhimes

63. “This Yes is about giving yourself the permission to shift the focus of what is a priority from what’s good for you over to what makes you feel good.”

— Shonda Rhimes

64. “My body is just the container full of bacon that I carry my brain around in. And maybe it is. Maybe it is just the container I carry my brain around in. But so is a car. And if the car is broken down and busted, my brain isn’t going anywhere. Same goes for my container.”

— Shonda Rhimes

65. “Cristina Yang was the walking validation of my dreams.”

— Shonda Rhimes

66. “I don’t think it ever occurred to me before how much and how often women are praised for displaying traits that basically render them invisible. When I really think about it, I realize the culprit is the language generally used to praise women.”

— Shonda Rhimes

67. “Wonder Woman is not faking it. Wonder Woman means it. Wonder Woman is all swagger and badassery. Compliment.”

— Shonda Rhimes

68. “We are only on the edge of change. There is still so much more work to be done. I’m going to accept this award as encouragement and not as accomplishment. I don’t think the job is finished yet.”

— Shonda Rhimes

69. “I was baptized Catholic but I was Church of Oprah. If you are a person on.”

— Shonda Rhimes

70. “Being a mother still happens if you don’t stay home with your kids. It still happens if you get a job and go to work. It happens if you are an Army Ranger and you’re deployed overseas and your kid is rating with your parents. Still a mother. Still not a job. Working or staying home, one is still a mother.”

— Shonda Rhimes

71. “Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.”

— Shonda Rhimes

72. “So when you negate someone’s compliment, you are telling them they are wrong. You’re telling them they wasted their time. You are questioning their taste and judgment. You.”

— Shonda Rhimes

73. “There is victory in surrender.”

— Shonda Rhimes

74. “Not a single woman in the room could handle being told, “You’re awesome.” I couldn’t handle being told I am awesome. What in the hell is wrong with us?”

— Shonda Rhimes

75. “You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. 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. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.”

— Shonda Rhimes

76. “Saying ‘no’ has gotten me here... ‘here’ sucks. Saying ‘yes’ might be my way to someplace better. If not a way to someplace better, at least a way to someplace different.”

— Shonda Rhimes

77. “The fact that someone paused to take the time to give me a compliment means something to me. No one is obligated to compliment you. They do it out of kindness. They do it because they want to. They do it because they believe the compliment they are offering. So when you negate someone’s compliment, you are telling them they are wrong. You’re telling them they wasted their time. You are questioning their taste and judgment. You are insulting them. If someone wants to compliment you, let them.”

— Shonda Rhimes

78. “There’s a hum that happens inside my head when I hit a certain writing rhythm, a certain speed. When laying track goes from feeling like climbing a mountain on my hands and knees to feeling like flying effortlessly through the air. Like breaking the sound barrier. everything inside me just shifts. I break the writing barrier. And the feeling of laying track changes, transforms, shifts from exertion into exultation.”

— Shonda Rhimes

79. “Now, I’m no longer looking for the enemy. So I no longer see the enemy.”

— Shonda Rhimes

80. “Losing yourself does not happen all at once. Losing yourself happens one no at a time. No to going out tonight. No to catching up with that old college roommate. No to attending that party. No to going on a vacation. No to making a new friend. Losing yourself happens one pound at a time.”

— Shonda Rhimes

81. “I don’t even know who someone is until i’ve seen how they handle adversity.”

— Shonda Rhimes

82. “I decide that if it is so hard to own up to my own accomplishments, to take a compliment, to not duck my head and choose Door Number Two, then I’m going to say YES to accepting any and all acknowledgments of personal fabulous awesomeness with a clear, calm “Thank you” and a confident smile and nothing more.”

— Shonda Rhimes

83. “Your body is yours. My body is mine. No one’s body is up for comment. No matter how small, how large, how curvy, how flat. If you love you, then I love you.”

— Shonda Rhimes

84. “People really do not like it when you decide to step off the road and climb the mountain instead. It seems to make even the people who mean well nervous.”

— Shonda Rhimes

85. “Motherhood means I’m always a little bit awake, a little bit alert at all times.”

— Shonda Rhimes

86. “The insides of my brain are a fading photograph, stories and images drifting away to places unknown. Leaving patches of nothingness where a name or an event or a location should be. Anyone.”

— Shonda Rhimes

87. “When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind.”

— Shonda Rhimes

88. “Standing around like Wonder Woman in the morning can make people think you are more amazing at lunchtime. Crazy. But true. How awesome is that?”

— Shonda Rhimes

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

— Shonda Rhimes

90. “I mean that I am going to miss Cristina Yang so much that my heart hurts.”

— Shonda Rhimes

91. “So you made it out of a uterus a long time ago. Big deal,” I whisper. “So did everybody else on the planet. What else you got?”

— Shonda Rhimes

92. “I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.”

— Shonda Rhimes

93. “I add words to the lexicon of daily conversation – maybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate.”

— Shonda Rhimes

94. “Hate diminishes, love expands.”

— Shonda Rhimes

95. “Everything sounds like crap until you are in the right mind-set.”

— Shonda Rhimes

96. “This is all made worse by the fact that I’m competitive. Not normal-people competitive. Not friendly competitive. Scary-psychotic competitive. Never hand me a volleyball. Don’t ask me to play a fun hand of cards. I have never heard of a casual round of Scrabble.”

— Shonda Rhimes

97. “It’s like surgery. You can’t close the patient’s chest until you’ve found the wound and operated on it. The problem is the open chest, the wound is the challenge and the YES is the operation. You.”

— Shonda Rhimes

98. “It irritated me to my core that we live in an era of ignorance great enough that it was still necessary for me to be a role model, but that didn’t change the fact that I was one.”

— Shonda Rhimes

99. “To them, it is a journey that has twists, turns, bumps and possibly detours, but no end. There are no exit ramps. And they don’t care. They are too busy having fun.”

— Shonda Rhimes

100. “The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because perhaps then they will learn from them. Perhaps then they will not isolate them. Marginalize them. Erase them. Perhaps they will even come to recognize themselves in them. Perhaps they will even learn to love them.”

— Shonda Rhimes