Quote

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

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
Happens
Extremes
May
Miss
Life
Extraordinary
Missing
Ordinary
Special
Happen
Dismiss
Waiting
Extreme

More quotes by Dani Shapiro

Image
In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.
Dani Shapiro
Image
When a writer's whole being is poured into a piece of work, there is never enough. The feeling of finally getting to the end of a piece of work, of making it as good as you can at that moment, is more of a relief than anything else, and then you wait for reviews.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
Dani Shapiro
Image
As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?
Dani Shapiro
Image
At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering.
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
I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.
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
Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
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.
Dani Shapiro
Image
I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.
Dani Shapiro
Image
When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.
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
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]
Dani Shapiro
Image
I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.
Dani Shapiro
Image
Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.
Dani Shapiro