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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

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Dani Shapiro
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 10
Author
Novelist
New York City
New York
Little
Room
Cigarette
Firsts
Novel
Smoke
First
Rooms
Wrote
Writing
Feeling
Fronts
Think
Bigs
Exactly
Thinking
Feelings
Front
Smoked
Like
Remember
Computer
Littles
Sitting
Cigarettes

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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.
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What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.
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If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.
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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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Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
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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.
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I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.
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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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You can start your day over anytime.
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We are tyrannized by our options.
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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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I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.
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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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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.
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Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.
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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 was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.
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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.
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