Dani Shapiro Quotations | Page 2

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

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.

When I started meditating, even doing yoga, I felt like it was hard to allow myself to develop any other kind of practice [outside of Judaism], like I was somehow being untrue to my heritage, and that was something I had to get over and was probably the greatest revelation to me.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

I was doing a lot of yoga and learning to meditate, and I found that extremely helpful, and still do and hopefully always will.

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?

What was going on inside of me became louder because everything around me became quieter.

There's something about urban life - you walk out your door, and you're in a steady of stream of life happening around you, and it's very easy to get caught up in that stream and simply kind of keep on moving.

The fact is that most husbands, regardless of religion - it's an old-fashioned gender divide where the husband wants to stay home and the wife is the one who drags herself and her children to whatever spiritual center they're going to.

From spiritual connection springs kindness, connection, social activism, and love.

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human.

When I was growing up, I had no idea that I could possibly become a writer. I wrote endlessly in journals - a practice I maintained for a long time, well into the writing life I had no idea I could ever have.

My journals were a clearing house - a garbage can. Once I was writing seriously, I understood that this was the stuff that didn't belong in my work.

I do keep a tiny little journal in which I write passages that I read and want to hold on to. This practice is sort of the opposite of Twitter.

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.

There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

As a writer we are our own instruments; we need to protect our instrument, because no one will protect it if we don't.

I think there's something about a writer's disposition, that is, even if unaware, always slightly in a witness state.

I've always felt like my nose is pressed to glass. I always feel a little bit like an outsider.

The truth is in the present moment.

Our teachers are everywhere. Our teachers are right in front of us, and take so many forms. All we need to do is to open our eyes, to be open to and aware of the possibilities. Otherwise, we walk sightless among miracles.

I've certainly faced some raw, real pain in my life. I lost my father to a car accident when I was young. My mother died ten years ago. My son was very sick as an infant. Eventually, I have attempted to transform this pain into art, to make meaning out of it.

You have to believe in yourself before the world has given you any indication that you should believe in yourself as a writer.

Open your hearts. Deep inside ourselves, we are all one and the same.

We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community.

I found myself doing so much public speaking, more and more and bigger and bigger.

I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.

I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.

If there's anything weirder than an introverted writer going to lots of social functions, it's an introverted writer being converted into an accidental guru.

With each book you write you have to learn how to write that book - so every time, you have to start all over again.

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

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.