Terry McMillan

"I'm not trying to be Toni Morrison or Katherine Anne Porter or Virginia Woolf. I'm not trying to do anything except tell stories."

"I would say that I write out of frustration. If I were a witch, I would twitch my nose and fix it all and make things easier for all of us. That's what's underneath it."

"…A lot of women write about messy, complex and complicated things. Our lives and experiences as women are complicated, and very dense, and on some levels, I think more multidimensional, because we have a whole lot more to deal with. Men don’t have periods. They don’t have babies, and nowadays they don’t have to worry about just taking care of a family. We women do all of that. And so, I find on some levels, our lives are a little bit more interesting…"

"Life is a lot of stops and starts, but when you get in your 50s, you see there is a finish line, and I want to go out sliding into home."