Dani Shapiro
Dani Shapiro
Daneile Joyce "Dani" Shapiro is the author of five novels and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion and Devotion. She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and ELLE...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 April 1962
CountryUnited States of America
sadness pockets stones
This sadness wasn't a huge part of me--I wasn't remotely depressed--but still, it was like a stone I carried in my pocket. I always knew it was there. [p. 179]
mother childhood trying
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]
writing alive wells
I never feel so alive as when I'm writing and the work is going well.
country urban living-in-the-country
I'm an urban person who loves living in the country.
book next fleeting
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?'
jobs imagine witness
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.
mother wife desire
In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.
hands ducks mind
Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.
running teacher writing
If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.
track feelings clue
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.
eye writing people
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."
wise book bigs
Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.
letting-go powerful haunting
Maggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
rubies links vaults
In every generation there is a vault-keeper, one who guards the links fiercely and knows they are more precious than rubies.