Dani Shapiro
Goodreads Author
Born
in New York, NY, The United States
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July 2009
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Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
15 editions
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published
2019
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Signal Fires
29 editions
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published
2022
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Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
8 editions
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published
2017
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Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
9 editions
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published
2013
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Devotion: a memoir
8 editions
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published
2010
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Family History
27 editions
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published
2003
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Slow Motion: A True Story (Harvest Book)
15 editions
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published
1998
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Black & White
27 editions
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published
2007
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Picturing the Wreck
4 editions
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published
1997
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Playing With Fire
4 editions
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published
1990
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“Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write”
― Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
― Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
“Still writing?" I usually nod and smile, then quickly change the subject. But here is what I would like to put down my fork and say: Yes, yes, I am. I will write until the day I die, or until I am robbed of my capacity to reason. Even if my fingers were to clench and wither, even if I were to grow deaf or blind, even if I were unable to move a muscle in my body save for the blink of one eye, I would still write. Writing saved my life. Writing has been my window -- flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence -- my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Writing has extended that grasp by pushing me beyond comfort, beyond safety, past my self-perceived limits. It has softened my heart and hardened my intellect. It has been a privilege. It has whipped my ass. It has burned into me a valuable clarity. It has made me think about suffering, randomness, good will, luck, memory responsibility, and kindness, on a daily basis -- whether I feel like it or not. It has insisted that I grow up. That I evolve. It has pushed me to get better, to be better. It is my disease and my cure. It has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses -- to chip away at my own bewilderment until I find the pattern in it. Once in a great while, I look up at the sky and think that, if my father were alive, maybe he would be proud of me. That if my mother were alive, I might have come up with the words to make her understand. That I am changing what I can. I am reaching a hand out to the dead and to the living and the not yet born. So yes. Yes. Still writing.”
― Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
― Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life
“It wasn't getting easier because it isn't supposed to get easier. Midlife was a bitch, and my educated guess was that the climb only got steeper from here. Carl Jung put it perfectly: "Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life," he wrote. "Worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will by evening have become a lie."
... I was writing a new program for the afternoon of life. The scales tipped away from suffering and toward openheartedness and love. [p. 182]”
― Devotion: a memoir
... I was writing a new program for the afternoon of life. The scales tipped away from suffering and toward openheartedness and love. [p. 182]”
― Devotion: a memoir
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