Best 64 quotes of Terry Mcmillan on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!)

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

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.

Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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

My stories are character driven.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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