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If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt it has to be creative.

Dani Shapiro

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Dani Shapiro
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 10
Author
Novelist
New York City
New York
Blame
Hurt
Creative
Write
Writing
Memoir

More quotes by Dani Shapiro

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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
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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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You can start your day over anytime.
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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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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I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.
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 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 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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Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.
Dani Shapiro
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The fact is that most husbands, regardless of religion - it's an old-fashioned gender divide where the husband wants to stay home and the wife is the one who drags herself and her children to whatever spiritual center they're going to.
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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My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.
Dani Shapiro
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Part of my spiritual work is learning to live with the knowledge that we can't protect our loved ones from pain and heartache.
Dani Shapiro
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We are tyrannized by our options.
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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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.
Dani Shapiro
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In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.
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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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