Dani Shapiro Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

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
Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

Dani Shapiro
As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

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

Dani Shapiro
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.

Dani Shapiro
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.

Dani Shapiro
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.

Dani Shapiro
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
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