Explore Quotes by Dani Shapiro

I had never really felt settled in Brooklyn. I think it had to do with growing up in New Jersey and being someone who her whole life wanted to live in the city, and the city meant Manhattan.

My dad died when I was 23. His death was sudden and shocking - the result of a car crash - and I never got to say goodbye.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

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.

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.

I live with my family on the top of a hill in the country, and during the days, my house is quiet, save for the occasional excitement of the FedEx truck heading up the driveway. I write.

I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.

Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

We secretly believe that if only we achieve some elusive goal - fitting into a pair of skinny jeans, or redoing our kitchen or getting that promotion - that it will make us happy. But the pain of our insecurity is hidden in all that racing around.

Novels are my favorite to write and read. I do like writing personal essays, too. I'm not really a short story writer, nor do I tend to gravitate to them as a reader.

It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.

I was raised in an orthodox Jewish home where it was expected that, as a woman, I'd marry an investment banker, raise kids in the suburbs and go to temple. I wasn't raised to set the world on fire.

I am devoted to my husband and son. I am devoted to the practices and rituals that imbue our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, that help me to live my days in the most emotionally and intellectually productive manner. I am devoted to the idea of devotion itself.

Our pain hides beneath these fluttering, random thoughts that run through our heads in an endless loop. But there's so much freedom in getting to know what's under there, the bedrock.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.

Sometimes when I'm at my desk, I'll realize that I have contorted myself completely, and I haven't moved for hours, and that my legs have fallen asleep. I am elsewhere, not in my body, not in the room, not in my house.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

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?'

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.