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
hands ducks mind
Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
letting-go monday believe
I don't know why this is, but I really believe that things don't happen when we're trying to will them into being. They don't happen when we're waiting for the phone to ring or the email to pop up in our inbox. They don't happen when we're gripping too tightly. They happen-if they happen at all-when we've fully let go of the results. And, perhaps, when we're ready.
dream writing breathing
Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.
country lonely husband
In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]
years two crosses
I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.
beautiful jobs mean
There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.
writing practice sitting-down
Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.
kids television-commercials adults
I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.
book writing journey
There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.
running home journey
In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.
jobs imagine witness
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
writing inspire way
Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
sides logic
Logic and faith don't occupy the same side.
writing world computer
The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations.