I believe that good television should be challenging and frustrating and maddening and thrilling. If you just want to see people who look like you and think like you and do what you would do in any given situation, you'd have to stop looking at TV and start looking in a mirror. But would that be as much fun?
I like people with their own opinions, and I like people who argue with me. It's very exhausting to be in a room full of people who just nod and smile.
I keep getting asked how I write about such smart, strong women, and my response is, what's the alternative? Weak, stupid women? They're just normal people, not role models - if you're aspiring to be like any of them, something's a little bit wrong. You may want to dress like one or have her job, but do not aspire to be her!
There is a part of me that's oblivious. People always ask me, 'What obstacles have you faced?' and I always think, 'What are you talking about?' Whether or not there were obstacles, I never saw obstacles. It's never occurred to me that I wasn't good enough for something.
I say it in the writers' room all the time: My black is not your black. What's terrifying is that, just the same way we've all accepted that normal is white, everybody seems to buy into the idea that there's only one way to be black or one way to be Hispanic. That's as damaging as anything else.
I've never personally had to use a Planned Parenthood. But I have many friends who have and do and did, and I think it's important that that access be there for everyone.
I never, ever pay attention to the ratings. I stopped paying attention to the ratings somewhere around season two or three of 'Grey's.' It's something I have no control over, so I don't even pay attention.
My parents are professors; they're intellectual. I spent a lot of time reading books. To me, everyone always looks like they do in your imagination. And in my imagination, the characters always looked like me.
That first year I was doing 'Grey's,' I didn't know it was possible to fire the creator of a show off their own show, so I didn't behave like somebody who was afraid of being fired.
My father used to say to me, 'The only limit to your success is your own imagination.' I actually believed that - like, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I might not be an Olympic figure skater.
The entire world is skewed from the white male perspective. If you're a woman, they have to say it's a female-driven comedy. If it's a comedy with Latinos in it, it's a Latino comedy. 'Normal' is white male, and I find that to be shocking and ridiculous.
These days, I feel like a chunky spy in a thinner world. Strangers tell fat jokes in front of me. Jokes not meant for me. But... completely for the woman I used to be 150 pounds ago. The woman I could be again one day. The woman I will always be inside. Because being thinner doesn't make you a different person. It just makes you thinner.
I've learned this is a very long marriage doing a television show. I like the people that I work with to be people I enjoy, so you want to cast people who are as excited and enthusiastic as you are.
I really do feel like the work and time we spend avoiding having difficult conversations is so much more wasteful and painful and time-consuming than actually having the difficult conversation.
I think my goal is to find a way to spend all of my time writing. I mean, sort of; true success is I'm doing nothing but writing if I do my job correctly.
This is going to sound crazy, but there was a period of time where on TLC they would show those surgeries - like a woman had a 90-pound tumor, or they separated these twins. And my sister and I - she lived in Ohio when I lived in California - would watch them together on the phone.
Most writing staffs have this crazy high turnover, and then everyone's really miserable, and I don't understand that. I don't know why you don't grow people to then be able to take over as you. That's how I can have more shows.
There are stories to be told that are still untold and characters to be portrayed that haven't been portrayed correctly. So there's work to be done.
I think any time you allow someone to see themselves reflected in another person on screen, there's validation there. It's hard to feel strong and sure of yourself when you're 15, but if you can turn on your television or computer and see someone who makes you feel like, 'I can be that strong...' there's validation there.
My philosophy was always try to look like Whitney Houston at all times. That did not work out so well.
