Shonda Rhimes Quotes

What attracts me to material are characters that I know - characters that I know people don't know but I know - and bringing them to the screen. Spotlighting voices that have not been heard before on screen.

It's time for storytellers to tell the stories that have not had the privilege of being shown to the world, and the audience will be there.

I really am a believer that 99.99% of all the stories we need, not only as artists but as human beings, not only as writers but as readers, haven't been written yet. Certainly haven't been published yet.

I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.

It's very important to me that people get to see themselves in stories. When someone tells me they've never seen themselves, I have a new goal.

The people who used to hold the purse strings were a select group of white, middle-aged men, but that's changing, and the more it continues to change, the more we'll see inclusive stories get told.

Diversity is essential to the success of the news industry, and journalists must include diverse voices in their coverage in order to reach a broader audience. We have stories to tell, but many in our audience have stopped listening because they can tell that we're not talking about them.

It's interesting because diversity doesn't just happen by garnishing your omelet with a little bit of parsley. Diversity happens because the people that are telling the stories - the writers, directors, storytellers - want to tell their story.

I think diversity has to happen on a storytelling level, not just on a casting level.

For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity.

I think there are many more stories still to be told about women.

There are a thousand weird untold stories in the Australian film industry, this has been one of them.

I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.

I don't see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.

I want to be able to work on a project that will give people around the world the chance to represent their own people, their own culture, their own stories, rather than just Hollywood - really, you know, dominated Hollywood. And that's a dream of mine.

Depending on the story that you're telling, you can be relatable to everybody or nobody. I try and tell everybody's story.

There are two places that are hard to write about. A place like Britain, England in particular, which has been written about by everybody, and then the place that's never been written about.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.

I certainly wanted to maintain some sense of mystery about Picard and that's why we never allowed certain situations to fully evolve, like the relationship between Picard and Beverly Crusher.

It happened to me on 'King of the Hill,' where I'd left it before the end and didn't really participate in the ending, and I always felt a little bit like I wanted to try a different version of that story.

Any opportunity I can get to showcase different characters, I absolutely love.

I think there's so many points of view that you want to make sure your stories are being told from men and women... you get all of the different backgrounds. You don't want every story being told from the same point of view. So just for better storytelling, I'm like, 'Yes, please, bring some more ladies on.'

As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome.

Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.