Top 80 Terry McMillan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

3. “You’ve been killing me inside and I don’t want to die like this.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

5. “Can’t nothing make your life work if you ain’t the architect.”

— Terry McMillan

6. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

7. “People like to run their mouths.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

11. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

13. “I pray for my children. That they stay safe and make good decisions. That they be happy, thoughtful, and caring human beings. That they have the strength to get up if they fall down.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

15. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

20. “It’s not that marriage itself is bad; it’s the people we marry who give it a bad name.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

22. “You cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” It’s Not All Downhill From Here.”

— Terry McMillan

23. “If it works, I’ll be happy for you. If it doesn’t, I’ll be here for you.”

— Terry McMillan

24. “It now seems obvious that the way we’re raised has a major impact on what kind of person we turn out to be, but so does who we love.”

— Terry McMillan

25. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

26. “You promised me you would never cheat on me, that you’d love me forever and we would never get a divorce.” “I still love you, and I hate that I cheated on you, and I wish we’d never gotten divorced.”

— Terry McMillan

27. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

28. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

30. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

31. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

32. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

33. “Sometimes you have to step outside of yourself in order to see inside.”

— Terry McMillan

34. “At least be a nice lesbian or you’re going to give the rest a bad rap.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

36. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

37. “I’m not an angry woman. I’m not bitter.”

— Terry McMillan

38. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

40. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

42. “People need to be re – sometimes we need to reinvent ourselves and then get reacquainted with our better selves.”

— Terry McMillan

43. “This is not the way I dreamed it. This is not what I had hope for, what I asked for. I want to skip this part. I want to push the fast-forward button until I get back to happy.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

45. “Always listen to the parent who doesn’t like who you love. They can smell a mistake. Of course, you don’t find this out until you realize that the person you fell in love with is different from the person you married. Some men are good at fooling you.”

— Terry McMillan

46. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

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

— Terry McMillan

48. “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.”

— Terry McMillan

49. “It is clear to me right this minute that regret is just a wasted emotion.”

— Terry McMillan

50. “I’m more interested in interpersonal relationships – between lovers families, siblings. That’s why I write about how we treat each other.”

— Terry McMillan