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
uplifting memories moving
With tremendous clarity and wisdom, Daniel Tomasulo has crafted a memoir at once heartbreaking and uplifting. Layers of time and memory—childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle age—are so beautifully revealed here, a trenchant reminder that our pasts are alive inside of us. There are psychologists who can write, and writers who can psychologize, but rarely have the two met on the page with such moving, profound results.
running home journey
In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.
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]
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.
moving hands pages
I'm most connected to myself when I'm alone in a room, moving my hand across a page. That's when I feel most like me.
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.
sadness pockets stones
This sadness wasn't a huge part of me--I wasn't remotely depressed--but still, it was like a stone I carried in my pocket. I always knew it was there. [p. 179]
mother childhood trying
I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41]
writing alive wells
I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.
country urban living-in-the-country
I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.
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?'
jobs imagine witness
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
mother wife desire
In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.
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.