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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.

People like to run their mouths.

What’s universal is the texture of our relationships. It’s evolving. Times are changing with the women’s movement. Men’s roles are being redefined and, in some ways, they’re confused.

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

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

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

I’m a fast writer.

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.

Every human being I know craves love and affection.

I don’t live my life as a writer. I’m a mother, an African–American woman, and I do everything that everybody else does – cook and a little bit of cleaning.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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