Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

by Shonda Rhimes

You know what, Delorse? You smell like poop.

Why would I have said no? But I know the answer. I knew the answer before I got out of bed. I just wanted the wine.

My parents worked very hard to raise and educate six—count ’em, six—children.

“I’m just happy to be playing the game of basketball,” he’d say, smiling.

“I’m just happy to be playing the game of basketba—I mean, writing for TV.”

I don’t want brownies. I want a whole damn Chocolate Factory. YES should feel like the sun.

YES does feel like the sun. Maybe I’m building my own damn Chocolate Factory.

I am never more sure of myself about a topic than when I have absolutely no experience with it.

Now, I’m no longer looking for the enemy. So I no longer see the enemy.

I’ve started to think we are like mirrors. What you are gets reflected back to you. What you see in yourself, you may see in others, and what others see in you, they may see in themselves.

I can experience life or I can give up on it.

Freedom lies across the field of the difficult conversation.

I realized I’d been wasting a huge amount of time and energy on complaining and feeling sorry for myself,

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.

Because 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.

I want Ride or Dies who make me want to be a better person.

“Don’t let what he wants eclipse what you need. He is very dreamy,” she says. “But he is not the sun. You are.”

“You were joyless. All you ever did was sleep. Literally. And metaphorically. You were asleep. I was worried. Life is short. Yours seemed really, really short. And now you have completely transformed. You’re alive. You’re living. Some people never do that.”