Quotes from Dani Shapiro

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.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

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?

Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

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

I love living in the country, so much so that I'm even surprised by it. I have met lots of interesting people - the community was really welcoming, and I now probably have a more interesting social life than I did in the city.

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.

There's a danger in romanticizing what it means to be a writer. Because what it really means is hard, hard work. It means tearing your hair out. Feeling like your head is about to explode.

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.

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

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

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

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.

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.

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 was raised in an observant Jewish household, so for me, Hebrew prayers - the sounds, the sunlight streaming in from the stained-glass windows of a synagogue - bring my father back to me as surely as if he were sitting next to me, my head pressed against his shoulder.

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

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

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

One of the stranger things about me is that I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. I went to a yeshiva until I was thirteen years old and spoke fluent Hebrew.

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.