Shonda Rhimes Quotes

I'm crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I wouldn't know how to write an episode of it.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

I have a pretty big TV background, and I have clocked so many hours in so many writers' rooms over the years.

If someone said, 'Sit down and write a 'Community' episode,' I would be panicked.

I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

I didn't write 'Snow White' for any class, but I got bitten by the screenwriting bug and wrote a couple of scripts in my spare time instead of going to keg parties or something.

TV writing is different than other mediums, involving the writer.

And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.

The cool thing about Kyle Killen, he writes really defined characters. I was a big fan of 'Awake' and also 'Lone Star.' I just think that he's a really, really special writer, and complex and deep, and a really smart dude.

In television writing, even if you're running the writers room, it's a writers room.

In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.

The scripts of 'The Wire' are fantastic - the scripts of 'Breaking Bad,' the scripts of 'Mad Men,' the scripts of 'The Sopranos,' the scripts of 'Battlestar Galactica.' You could keep going on. They're incredibly well written.

In school, I used to write scripts and all that good stuff.

I've written close to 20 screenplays and 100 sketches - I know exactly how to do them. They're judged by set criteria that I know.

When I was a staff writer on 'NYPD Blue,' it was truly my job to hear David Milch's voice for that show and to deliver episodes that embodied that voice.

There are a lot of good writers in TV!

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

But I've never tried writing an episode of 'EastEnders', even as an exercise.

It seems to me the big weakness in most films is the writing. You can learn directing, but you can't learn writing.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

A good script makes our job a lot easier.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.