Terry mcmillan quotes

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

I'd crack up without my music. It's the best company you can have, really. It don't say 'no' or 'maybe,' or ask no questions.

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.

I let my characters do the talking, simple as that.

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

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

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 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.

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 try to create characters that I am fascinated by on some level or intrigued by or can't stand.

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

Let me put it this way: when I read, I learned the world was not as small as my house. And that everybody in my home town was not representative of the way people in the world were raised. And that was what saved me.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I take what people feel and think, especially when it's different from, very seriously, and I find it liberating.

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

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

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

Why is it that if you happen to be black and over six feet tall, everybody thinks you supposed to play basketball or football?

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

It's not that marriage itself is bad; it's the people we marry who give it a bad name.

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

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.

I want to push the fast-forward button until I get back to happy.

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.

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!

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

People always have something to say about what you do and how you do it.

People like to run their mouths.

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

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.

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

As far as young kids go, my primary interest is to get parents to read to their kids. That’s about the most you can do, I think.

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!)

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

I don't trust white critics' judgment about most things that deal with black life, particularly when a black person is the creator.

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.

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

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

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

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.

My stories are character driven.

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.