Dani Shapiro Quotes

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.

In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.

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]

It's not gender-specific, but I do think it's women who tend to start having that sort of little whispering voice of "I want more here" and "I want more for my family."

I don't want to lean back into the past, or forward into the future. I don't want to wish the present moment away.

I was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache. In fact, to love - fully, madly, deeply - is the ensure heartache some day.

Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!

Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.

We don't ruminate during a fight. Maybe in a bath, or driving a car, or as we take a walk. But not right smack in the middle of a dramatic moment.

I’ve discovered that my best work comes from the uncomfortable but fruitful feeling of not having a clue – of being worried, secretly afraid, even convinced that I’m on the wrong track.

I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.

I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.

If there's anything weirder than an introverted writer going to lots of social functions, it's an introverted writer being converted into an accidental guru.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community.

There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.

In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.

Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.

My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

Moving to the country has been incredibly good for my work, for my sense of perspective.

It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way.

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.

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.

You have to believe in yourself before the world has given you any indication that you should believe in yourself as a writer.

When I near the end of a book, it feels as if the entire universe meets me more than halfway and supports me. The whole world seems to shimmer when I find the words. My mind quiets.

The truth is in the present moment.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.