Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Dani Shapiro
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 10
Author
Novelist
New York City
New York
Going
Behind
Preoccupation
Really
Writer
Blow
Fiction
Door
Leave
Mines
Open
Mine
Point
Close
Past
Doors
Back
Behinds
More quotes by Dani Shapiro
Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.
Dani Shapiro
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
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.
Dani Shapiro
I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.
Dani Shapiro
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
We are tyrannized by our options.
Dani Shapiro
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
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
Traces that live within us often lead us to our stories
Dani Shapiro
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
I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.
Dani Shapiro
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.
Dani Shapiro
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
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
Courage is more important than confidence
Dani Shapiro
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
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
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
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
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
