Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 1

If you want crappy things to stop happening to you, then stop accepting crap and demand something more. —CRISTINA YANG, GREY’S ANATOMY.

Answer 1

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 2

“We will always be the hottest women in the old folks’ home. ”.

Answer 2

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 3

I am known for giving good story. The kind of good story told over dinner that makes my friends laugh, that gets my date to accidentally spit his cocktail across a table. The kind of good story that has everyone asking me to “tell that one again. ” That’s my superpower—telling good stories.

Answer 3

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 4

More comfortable with books than new situations.

Answer 4

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 5

I’m a doer. I do. So. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. When I say I’m going to do something, I really do it. I throw myself into it and I do. I do my ass off. I do right up to the finish line. No matter what. No. Matter. What.

Answer 5

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 6

I was baptized Catholic but I was Church of Oprah.

Answer 6

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 7

“Synergy. ” Meaningful look. I nod and smile, but between you and me? I think synergy sounds like the word one uses to define the calories two people burn off during sex. Think about it. Synergy. Anyway.

Answer 7

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 8

Put some food on top of my stress.

Answer 8

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 9

The things that you can do when you are at the bottom of the ladder change as you move up. At the top of that ladder, doing many of those very same things makes you an asshole.

Answer 9

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 10

The only mommy I am ever at war with is me.

Answer 10

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 11

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.

Answer 11

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 12

LESSON ONE: DITCH THE DREAM. BE A DOER, NOT A DREAMER.

Answer 12

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 13

So yes, tomorrow may suck for you—as it did for me. But as you stare at the lint in your navel, have some perspective. We are incredibly lucky.

Answer 13

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 14

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 that I am failing in another area of my life.

Answer 14

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 15

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,.

Answer 15

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 16

You are no longer students. You are no longer works in progress. You are now citizens of the real world. You have a responsibility to become a person worthy of joining and contributing to society.

Answer 16

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 17

Nobody has this thing figured out. Except doesn’t it feel like everyone else has figured it out?.

Answer 17

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 18

“But being a mother is also a job, Shonda. ” I can hear someone reading this book saying those words right now. You know what I say to that? NO. IT IS NOT. Being a mother is not a job. Stop throwing things at me. I’m sorry but it is not. I find it offensive to motherhood to call being a mother a job. Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am. You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation.

Answer 18

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 19

Being a mother still happens if you don’t stay home with your kids. It still happens if you get a job and go to work.

Answer 19

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 20

If you try to tell me that I must define my motherhood in the same terms as yours.

Answer 20

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 21

We all have to acknowledge that our way is not the way.

Answer 21

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 22

And I am always going to yell “What the fuck!” at the PTA meeting if you tell me the brownies need to be homemade.

Answer 22

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 23

It’s not about working moms vs. Nonworking moms. It’s about people who love hot-gluing beads on capes vs. People who do not know what a hot-glue gun is. And it’s not even that. It’s about the non–glue gun people not assuming the glue gun people are judging them, and vice versa.

Answer 23

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 24

I am not a naturally optimistic person. I’m too in my own head to be a constant source of cheer. I have to work at happy. Dark and twisty is where my brain likes to settle. So I can use some reminders of what is good and optimistic and glass-half-full about this world. And nothing does that for me like the faces and souls of my tiny humans.

Answer 24

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 25

Is about giving yourself the permission to shift the focus of what is a priority from what’s good for you over to what makes you feel good.

Answer 25

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 26

I make a rule that I will not work on Saturday or Sunday unless it’s an emergency or unless the show is filming. I’ve been guilty of working straight through far too many weekends in order to “get ahead. ” There’s no such thing. The work is always there in the morning.

Answer 26

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 27

She has treated herself like an athlete in training. Ellen believes that to do her job well, she needs to take care of herself—inside and out.

Answer 27

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 28

When they asked about race. But you can’t be raised black in America and not know. This wasn’t just my shot. It was ours.

Answer 28

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 29

“You have to be twice as good to get half as much. . . ” I didn’t want half. I wanted it all. And so I worked four times as hard.

Answer 29

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 30

It irritated me to my core that we live in an era of ignorance great enough that it was still necessary for me to be a role model, but that didn’t change the fact that I was one.

Answer 30

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 31

Food does work. Food feels so good when you put it on top of all the stuff you don’t want to deal with or know how to deal with. It even works on stuff you don’t even recognize as worthy of dealing with.

Answer 31

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 32

I work hard—that’s how I succeed. That’s how ANYONE succeeds.

Answer 32

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 33

I’m betting all of those big-time programs you see advertised and recommended by your doctor work. But only if you decide that YOU are going to do the work to make the programs work. Meaning, nothing works if you don’t actually decide that you are really and truly ready to do it.

Answer 33

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 34

Everything sounds like crap until you are in the right mind-set. Everything sounds like crap while you are still busy listing reasons you should get to eat that whole cake.

Answer 34

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 35

I made myself drink sixty-four ounces of water every day. Which is just A LOT of water. But it made my skin look fantastic.

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Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 36

I’m a quiet nerdy writer who seemingly overnight became. . . Well, famous. Being famous, even if you are an actor, is considered the toll you pay for getting to do your job at the highest level.

Answer 36

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 37

I am a powerful woman who knows no powerful women. I am on the list but I am not of the list.

Answer 37

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 38

I know this isn’t an award because I’m a woman or BECAUSE I’m African-American. I know that it’s really about breaking the glass ceiling that exists in the face of being a woman and being black in this very male, very white town.

Answer 38

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 39

“Did you notice not a single woman in this room can handle being told she is awesome? What is wrong with us?!”.

Answer 39

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 40

Lucky implies I didn’t do anything. Lucky implies something was given to me. Lucky implies that I was handed something I did not earn, that I did not work hard for.

Answer 40

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 41

I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.

Answer 41

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 42

Mindy is an F. O. D. First. Only. Different.

Answer 42

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 43

As an African-American woman, how does it feel to fill in the blank?.

Answer 43

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 44

Since I’ve never been anything other than a black woman, I can’t tell you how specifically anything feels any more than someone could tell someone how things feel as a white woman. It’s a creepy question. Stop asking it.

Answer 44

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 45

Mom diminishes and martyrs herself. The message is: mothers, you are such wonderful and good people because you make yourselves smaller, because you deny your own needs, because you toil tirelessly in the shadows and no one ever thanks or notices you. . . This all makes you AMAZING. Yuck.

Answer 45

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 46

“Fool. He was flirting with you. He was trying to meet with your client. ” “Meet with your client” is Gordon-speak for getting laid. See, the client is my— Moving on.

Answer 46

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 47

Many people think that The Devil Wears Prada is about how mean that boss lady is, I know they are wrong. To me, it’s clear that it is a daring exposé on how hard it is to find a good assistant.

Answer 47

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 48

You have to decide that your goal is that NO ONE is going to be as good as you are at tennis. Then you have to make it true. And you have to be okay with being better than everyone else.

Answer 48

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 49

I did not know how to celebrate my success in the face of my friends’ continued struggles.

Answer 49

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 50

“It’s not bragging if you can back it up,” I whisper to myself in the shower every morning. That is my favorite Muhammad Ali quote. If you ask me, Ali invented modern-day swagger.

Answer 50

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 51

People like being around whole, healthy, happy people.

Answer 51

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 52

My dream was coming true. You know what happens when all of your dreams come true? Nothing. I realized a very simple truth: that success, fame, having all my dreams come true would not fix or improve me, it wasn’t an instant potion for personal growth. Having all my dreams come true only seemed to magnify whatever qualities I already possessed.

Answer 52

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 53

I am from the Midwest. I will fight you if you try to tell me to buy a fancy cheese—bulk cheese never hurt anybody. And so what if cheap toilet paper is scratchy? The scratchy is how you know you are clean.

Answer 53

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 54

No is a complete sentence.

Answer 54

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 55

I did not lose a friend. I gained a second superpower.

Answer 55

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 56

No matter how hard a conversation is, I know that on the other side of that difficult conversation lies peace. Knowledge. An answer is delivered. Character is revealed. Truces are formed. Misunderstandings are resolved.

Answer 56

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 57

Freedom lies across the field of the difficult conversation. And the more difficult the conversation, the greater the freedom.

Answer 57

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 58

Saying what you think and wading into the deep end don’t always have a happy ending. Difficult conversations are something of a gamble and you have to be willing to be okay with the outcome.

Answer 58

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 59

No one is meaner than a pack of human beings faced with someone who is different.

Answer 59

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 60

The fundamental human need for one human being to hear another human being say to them: “You are not alone. You are seen. I am with you. You are not alone. ”.

Answer 60

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 61

I’m normalizing TV. I am making TV look like the world looks.

Answer 61

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 62

You are not alone. Nobody should be alone. So. I write.

Answer 62

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 63

Your tribe of people, they are out there in the world. Waiting for you.

Answer 63

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 64

I want my editors to fight with me. I like to be challenged. I like to be proven wrong. I am deeply suspicious of instant agreement. Instant agreement terrifies me.

Answer 64

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 65

Happy, whole people are drawn to happy, whole people, but nothing makes a toxic person more miserable and destructive than a happy, whole person. Unhappy people do not like it when a fellow unhappy person becomes happy.

Answer 65

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 66

People think the substance of a TV show is the words I’ve put on the paper. It’s not. The substance of a show is character.

Answer 66

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 67

It’s not merely about surrounding myself with people who treat me well. It’s also about surrounding myself with people whose self-worth, self-respect and values inspire me to elevate my own behavior.

Answer 67

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 68

They do not make me braver, faster, stronger. They tell me I already am braver, faster, stronger.

Answer 68

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 69

She delivers her very last words. Her final piece of advice to the women of America. “Don’t let what he wants eclipse what you need. He is very dreamy,” she says. “But he is not the sun. You are. ” Her final piece of advice is not just for the women of America, I am now realizing, but also for me.

Answer 69

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 70

The angrier I get, the calmer I become. The angrier she gets, the louder she becomes.

Answer 70

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 71

They are MFEO: Made For Each Other.

Answer 71

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 72

You know what’s a bigger taboo than being fat? Not wanting to get married.

Answer 72

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 73

When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind.

Answer 73

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 74

So while I was busy having epiphanies, a horrible thing was happening to a perfectly wonderful human being. I may have been growing and changing but I was also taking someone’s dream and plan for the future and setting it on fire. That the price of my joy was another person’s pain is something I’ll forgive myself for.

Answer 74

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 75

Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.

Answer 75

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Question 76

The Promised Land. Which is the name of Oprah’s home.

Answer 76

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes