Terry McMillan Quotes

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

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

money does not guarantee happiness or peace of mind, it can take your mind off things, distract you, but it can't replace the generic stuff a person needs!

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

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

What I do know is sometimes we love the wrong people and sometimes we marry them.

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

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

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

Wherever there's a prison, for the most part, especially where there's Black people, it's overcrowded. I don't know who really gets out.

Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.

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.

I remember the day I turned thirty. I was getting out of the shower and I stood in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a long time. I examined every inch of my body and appreciated the fact that I finally looked like a grown woman. I also assumed that this was how I was going to look for the rest of my life. The way I saw it, I was never going to age; I'd just look up one day and be old.

People like to run their mouths.

My mama taught me that anything worth doing in life should be a little scary.

We get divorce, we get conned, someone we love dies, or we can't find anybody to love us or somebody breaks our heart and we realize this fairy tale ain't fair. So we suffer.

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.

We never thought some guy would deliberately fill our hearts with brown sugar and then pour hot water all over it.

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.

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

Look, as my mama always said, 'One monkey don't stop no show.