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.
Dani ShapiroMaggie Shipstead takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go. Astonish Me is a haunting, powerful novel.
Dani ShapiroConfidence 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.
Dani ShapiroIf I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.
Dani ShapiroI 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 ShapiroWe don't ruminate during a fight. Maybe in a bath, or driving a car, or as we take a walk. But not right smack in the middle of a dramatic moment.
Dani ShapiroThis may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.
Dani ShapiroMy 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.
Dani ShapiroAfter 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 ShapiroThere are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.
Dani Shapiro