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

“They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true.I think that’s crap.I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing.”

“One of the most amazing things about my job is that I have arguably, maybe not even arguably - definitively - the best boss on the planet. Shonda Rhimes is the best.”

“Writing is the hum. Writing is laying track. Writing is the high. Now imagine that hum, that high, that track to be laid is behind a door. And that door is five miles away. Those five miles are just . . . writing crap and doodling and trying to have an idea and surfing the internet and hoping like hell not to get so distracted that you give up. Worse? Those five miles are lined with brownies and cupcakes and episodes of Game of Thrones and Idris Elba waiting to talk to only you and really good novels to read. Every time I sit down to write, I have to mentally run those five miles past all of that to get to that door. It’s a long, hard five-mile run. Sometimes I am almost dead by the time I reach the door. That’s why I have to keep doing it. The more often I run the five miles, the fitter I become. And the fitter I become, the easier the run begins to feel and the less fresh and exciting all that stuff on the side of the road seems. I mean, how long has it been there? More important, as I get fitter, I can run faster. And the faster I can run, the faster I can get to that door. The faster you can too, writers out there. When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind. The faster I can get to that door, the quicker I can get to the good stuff.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Did I tell you what veal practice is? Oh! Veal practice involved me lying very still on the sofa trying as hard as I could to mimic the life of a veal. While eating veal. I wish I were kidding. It. Was. Magic.”

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

“She's wonderful and soulful. She has a sly sense of humor. I've seen her deliver a funnier joke with a single silent raise of her eyebrow than many stand up comedians. She guards a very sensitive heart. Any human suffering brings her to tears. She's smart. Talk down to her and find yourself mentally slapped. She's an excellent judge of character, and seems to know an original spirit from a forgery every time. Cross boundaries with her...in any improper way and suffer the wrath of a lion. ... She's principled and firm. Rude behavior doesn't materialize in her presence. She's a grown-up who fully sees and knows children as citizens, and people, and souls. And because she respects children, all children seem to respect her.”

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

“Shonda, how do you do it all?The answer is this: I don't.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....That is the trade-off.That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous.”