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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of focusing on one's creative work rather than getting overwhelmed by external factors like marketing and ratings.
In this quote, Shonda Rhimes highlights the role of a creator in the entertainment industry, asserting that her primary responsibility is to produce compelling content. She believes that becoming preoccupied with marketing strategies and audience ratings can detract from the creative process, suggesting that artists should concentrate on their craft while leaving other concerns to others. This perspective reflects the challenge of maintaining artistic integrity in a commercially driven environment.
In practice
In a speech about artistic integrity, this quote can be shared to inspire fellow creators to prioritize their work.
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.
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.
We all think we’re going to be great and we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met. But sometimes our expectations sell us short. Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You got to wonder why we cling to our expectations, because the expected is just what keeps us steady. Standing. Still. The expected's just the beginning, the unexpected is what changes our lives.
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.'
When I'm hard at work, when I'm deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyonce. And it is all of those things at the same time.
A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.
To me, Godard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music: they both revolutionized their forms.
My goal as a creative person is to express truth and beauty in whatever I do
We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.
I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family.
Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.
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