Terry McMillan Quotes

Being a lifetime wife and mother has afforded me the luxury of having multiple careers: I've been a teacher. A chauffeur. A chef. An interior decorator. A landscape architect, as well as a gardener. I’ve been a painter. A personal shopper. An accountant and a banker. I’ve been a beautician. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. A movie reviewer. A nurse. A psychologist. A negotiator. An I have a Ph. D in How to Pretend Like You Don’t Mind.

Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.

I'm the only one who can stop me.. I'm the one who's been sitting at the stoplight all these years, waiting for the light to turn green.

Writing is my shelter. I don't hide behind the words; I use them to dig inside my heart to find the truth.

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

Pay attention to the things that agitate you. It will tell you a lot about yourself.

It's amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to.

People like to run their mouths.

Writing is the only place I can be myself and not feel judged.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

As a writer, you get to bring attention to something without preaching. I don't believe in being didactic. So if you dramatize something, you automatically bring attention to it if people read it.

I would like to think that as a result of not just my own experiences, but at least being empathetic and compassionate about other people's experiences and plights and tragedies, that I am affected by it and learn from it.

I'm more interested in interpersonal relationships - between lovers families, siblings. That's why I write about how we treat each other.

Folks want to glow, to leave their worries and dead skin behind.

Parents can ruin children, and sometimes that's a learned behavior. Sometimes you can't blame your parents for it, sometimes you can. I think to me, that's what the whole paradox is, is people that have children that don't even know how to raise them.

I would be content being a housewife if I could find the kind of man who wouldn't treat me like one.

don't sabotage your own greatness by succumbing to failure!

It goes without saying that your friends are usually the first to discuss your personal business behind your back.

Good parents have children who do terrible things and vice-versa.

I have a big mouth, and over the years, as the eldest of five, I have had a tendency to speak when no one really cared.

It should be obvious that I wasn't no honor roll student in high school. My favorite class was boys.

Back then I confused passions and orgasms with love. It look me years to realize the two weren't synonymous.

Write from your heart, and God will take care of the rest.

happiness aint got no Ph.D. or no certain amount of zeroes behind it!

There is a price for popularity. Critics look for your weaknesses, your flaws, anything that makes the work seem like a fluke and not seem worthy of all the attention it's getting.

life is like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to see the whole picture, then put it together piece by piece!

Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect.

I also discovered that you can get used to a man , much like you do a household pet!

You know, one of my fears about living alone so long is that you get used to doing everything your own way.

I just believe that young people need to be able to learn how to write in their own voice. Just like a musician, you pride yourself on having your own distinct sound.

My stories are character driven.

I been saying it for years: church is full of sneaky men posing as honest souls, and they are perpetuators our here looking for women just like you, with giant holes in your hearts, and they can smell when you got a good job and when you lonely as hell.

I'm not trying to be a middle aged centerfold, I just want to look at myself naked and not be disgusted.

I love writing in first person more than third. I have to basically suspend my own world. I don't exist. I'm just a conduit. So I can be eight years old. I can be the mother of a kid that you find out certain things I'm not going to say.

I like to think of what happens to characters in good novels and stories as knots--things keep knotting up. And by the end of the story--readers see an unknotting of sorts. Not what you expect, not the easy answers you get on TV, not wash and wear philosophies, but a reproduction of believable, emotional experiences.

I'm not an angry woman. I'm not bitter.

People need to be re - sometimes we need to reinvent ourselves and then get reacquainted with our better selves.

I was tired of chasing ghosts, hollow men who were outside my comfort zone, men who had nothing to give me except a rush. It was all I asked for, and all I ever got.

You've been killing me inside and I don't want to die like this.

Sometimes I cheat and buy things I used to make from scratch and just doctor them up.

Cruising the Internet doesn't count as writing. Neither does answering e-mail. Before you check Twitter & FB and do other similar tasks that get in the way of writing, write first. (I really need to take my own advice here!)

I don't let negative criticism, for the most part, bother me.

At least be a nice lesbian or you're going to give the rest a bad rap.

I can't stand that - those women in 'Waiting to Exhale' now. I can't stand them. But that's because I'm 53 and not 33. But what they were experiencing at 33, I identified with it.

I've got tons of irreplaceable information inside the soul of this computer.

It's sad to think that we've gotten to this, that we actually have to think about how to go about finding a man. But what's even sadder is that some men make you feel guilty for looking.

I like doing the readings and the autographing, but the interviewing gets a little tedious because you get asked the same questions every day and sometimes three or four times a day.

The best rush in the world is getting something at 80 percent off.

Now, I've been known to be attractive on special occasions, and I do my best to project as much beauty as I can muster from deep inside, though I often fail.

I used to get a lot of letters from prisoners. It used to get on my nerves. Especially family members. Everybody's innocent.