Dani Shapiro Quotes

I'm trying to get in the habit of, you know, picking up a book and learning how to write my feelings down, not my feelings but my thoughts, about things, and hopefully I'll moving toward the writing and directing thing soon.

I'm always working on my next novel, even when I'm not.

Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

For all my longer works (i.e. the novels) I write chapter outlines so I can have the pleasure of departing from them later on.

I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work.

When you spend time with your friends, what do you talk about? Those things which made an impression on you that day, that week ... I write stories the same way. Events at home, in school, at work, in the street, these are the bases for a story. Some experiences leave such a deep impression that instead of talking about them at the club I work them into a novel.

Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

Literally, I see my writing as transcription - a transcription of what I see, hear, think, live.

Before I studied story, I was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to do. It was really hard; much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've studied story, I think I'd have a different approach and maybe I could actually get it done.

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.

In a sense, the story, or poem or verse or whatever it is you're writing, you can kind of think of it as a kind of projectile. Imagine it is a kind of projectile which has been specially shaped to be aerodynamic, and that your target is the soft grey putty of the reader's brain.

The fallacy is that you have to hold some sort of stake in the grief or horror in order to write about it - I think the opposite is true.

I don't read novels whilst I'm writing one; I just haven't got a wide enough brain to concentrate on incoming and outgoing in the same time zone.

Saul Bellow once said, 'A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation' — which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was — losing myself in these imaginary worlds.

I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.

When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.

You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.

I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write.

When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of the book.