Quotes from Dani Shapiro

Everything I know about life I learned from the daily practice of sitting down to write.

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

In my life as a wife and mother, I'm always conscious of my desire to be present.

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.

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.

Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity - as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it's certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.

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

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.

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

Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.

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.

The truth is in the present moment.

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.

I used to act in television commercials when I was a kid and a young adult.

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

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache. In fact, to love - fully, madly, deeply - is the ensure heartache some day.

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.

It's not gender-specific, but I do think it's women who tend to start having that sort of little whispering voice of "I want more here" and "I want more for my family."

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.

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

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