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
fluent orthodox spoke thirteen until
One of the stranger things about me is that I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I went to a yeshiva until I was thirteen years old and spoke fluent Hebrew.
excitement family heading hill house occasional save top
I live with my family on the top of a hill in the country, and during the days, my house is quiet, save for the occasional excitement of the FedEx truck heading up the driveway. I write.
fallen legs moved
Sometimes when I'm at my desk, I'll realize that I have contorted myself completely, and I haven't moved for hours, and that my legs have fallen asleep. I am elsewhere, not in my body, not in the room, not in my house.
learn time
With each book you write you have to learn how to write that book - so every time, you have to start all over again.
dull hiding inside
When we reach reflexively for something to dull an ache inside of us, in that very moment of reaching, we are hiding from our pain. We're storing it away. Tamping it down.
writing way window
Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.
writing simple answers
How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'
writing ongoing needs
Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write
heart son moments
My son is now fourteen, and from the moment he was born, I understood that forevermore my heart would be walking around outside my body.
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.
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.