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We don't choose what's going to wake us up.

Dani Shapiro

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Dani Shapiro
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 10
Author
Novelist
New York City
New York
Wake
Choose
Going

More quotes by Dani Shapiro

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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.
Dani Shapiro
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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
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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
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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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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
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.
Dani Shapiro
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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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
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I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.
Dani Shapiro
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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Courage is more important than confidence
Dani Shapiro
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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
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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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.
Dani Shapiro
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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
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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
Dani Shapiro
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Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
Dani Shapiro
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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.
Dani Shapiro