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

Dani Shapiro

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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

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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.
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Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
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Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
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My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.
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There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.
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We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache. In fact, to love - fully, madly, deeply - is the ensure heartache some day.
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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.
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Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.
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We don't choose what's going to wake us up.
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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
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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]
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Confidence is highly overrated when it comes to creating literature. A writer who is overly confident will not engage in the struggle to get it exactly right on the page - but rather, will assume that she's getting it right without the struggle.
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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.
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If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt it has to be creative.
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Courage is more important than confidence
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Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.
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Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.
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You can start your day over anytime.
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Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.
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There's something about urban life - you walk out your door, and you're in a steady of stream of life happening around you, and it's very easy to get caught up in that stream and simply kind of keep on moving.
Dani Shapiro