Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Dani Shapiro More Quotes by Dani Shapiro More Quotes From Dani Shapiro Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers. Dani Shapiro things-change moments trying 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? Dani Shapiro fleeting next book I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41] Dani Shapiro childhood mother trying At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering. Dani Shapiro showing-up meditation practice Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too. Dani Shapiro creating teaching memories We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache. Dani Shapiro heartache protect pain 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. Dani Shapiro distance dream writing 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. Dani Shapiro heritage yoga practice If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people. Dani Shapiro hearing complicated 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. Dani Shapiro helpful yoga found I did want to feel like life's all of one piece. Dani Shapiro one-piece pieces want We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community. Dani Shapiro hungry community littles 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. Dani Shapiro community solitude thinking When I lived in the city, I had learned to close my door against a lot of the noise, but when I open my door here, I'm not opening into the possibility that I'm going to run into somebody or be faced with a hundred choices about what I'm going to do, or which cafe I'm going to go to, or which way to distract myself. Dani Shapiro cities running doors It's easier in an urban world to cast the blame outward. So I've learned a lot about my own process in that way. Dani Shapiro urban way world When I was starting out there was no Internet, there wasn't this sense that you could be connected to other writers around the world. And that created a kind of innocence, or parochial quality, even in NYC. Dani Shapiro nyc quality world The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations. Dani Shapiro computer writing world I'm very disciplined, but the one thing that I have addictive behavior about is the Internet. Dani Shapiro one-thing internet behavior After my family leaves in the morning, I'll make my first coffee of the day and then I head upstairs to go to work. At least, that's my plan. I'm not going to check email. I'm not going on Facebook, or sneaking a glimpse at my Instagram feed. No. I'm not going to down that road. But with multiple devices, by the time I get upstairs [to my study] I may well have heard my iPhone ding and - it's Pavlovian. Dani Shapiro iphone coffee morning When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel. Dani Shapiro feelings writing thinking
