Dani Shapiro

“When we reach reflexively for something to dull an ache inside of us, in that very moment of reaching, we are hiding from our pain. We're storing it away. Tamping it down.”

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

“I believe that there is something connecting us ... Something that was here before we got here and will still be here after we're gone. I've begun to believe that all of our consciousnesses are bound up in that greater consciousness. ...An animating presence .... [pp. 205-206]”

“The mind is a monkey, hopping around from thought to thought, image to image. Rarely do more than a few seconds go by in which the mind can remain single-pointed, empty.”

“To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.”

“My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.”

“I'm a full-time writer, which means I have the entire day to get my work done. But that can also be bad, because that means I have the entire day to get in my way.”

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

“How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'”

“I don't think it's possible to separate out the strands of a writer's history, circumstances, life events, and that writer's themes.”

“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.”

“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?'”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Sometimes, I'm driving along in my car, and a song from my high-school years comes on the radio: Springsteen's 'Thunder Road.' Just the opening few chords make me want to roll down the window and let the wind blow back my hair.”

“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.”

“It wasn't so much that I was in search of answers. In fact, I was wary of the whole idea of answers. I wanted to climb all the way inside of the questions and see what was there.”

“Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.”

“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.”