Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro
Daneile Joyce "Dani" Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 April 1962
CountryUnited States of America
waiting missing special
If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen—I may just miss my life.
writing persistence rejection
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
struggle creating literature
Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
meditation hours
At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering.
book next fleeting
Success is so fleeting; even if you get a good book deal, or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: 'What about the next one?'
religious mean thinking
Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity - as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it's certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.
beautiful decision parent
My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.
running haunting theme
I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.
pain heartache protect
We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.
notebook feelings pages
When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.
rubies links vaults
In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.
letting-go powerful haunting
Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
wise book bigs
Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.
running teacher writing
If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.