Quote

We are tyrannized by our options.

Dani Shapiro

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dani Shapiro
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 10
Author
Novelist
New York City
New York
Tyrannized
Options

More quotes by Dani Shapiro

Image
If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I've certainly faced some raw, real pain in my life. I lost my father to a car accident when I was young. My mother died ten years ago. My son was very sick as an infant. Eventually, I have attempted to transform this pain into art, to make meaning out of it.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I do strongly identify with being Jewish. I was raised Orthodox and had a childhood complicated by the fact that my father was deeply religious and my mother was not.
Dani Shapiro
Image
My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.
Dani Shapiro
Image
If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt it has to be creative.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Courage is more important than confidence
Dani Shapiro
Image
I never troll for material. It simply presents itself, and is always unmistakable. This is why I want to roll my eyes when people interrupt themselves in the middle of some story they're telling me to say, You know you can't write about this.
Dani Shapiro
Image
It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
Dani Shapiro
Image
I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.
Dani Shapiro
Image
When I started meditating, even doing yoga, I felt like it was hard to allow myself to develop any other kind of practice [outside of Judaism], like I was somehow being untrue to my heritage, and that was something I had to get over and was probably the greatest revelation to me.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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?
Dani Shapiro