Dani Shapiro Quotes

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life.

I think you have to know who you are. Get to know the monster that lives in your soul, dive deep into your soul and explore it.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.

You get talent when you discover the ground of your pain.

I'm interested in writing that explores all sides of human beings.

Emotion is a broad spectrum and I just been to a lot of sides of my own emotions.

There is a very pensive and intense side to me that even I did not know someone could capture.

You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.

I don't think you learn as much about yourself when you are moving forwards as when you have fallen backwards. That's when you really learn who you are. And reach for the things that have propelled you forward and made you a better person.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art...what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

I've been through many years of psychotherapy, psycho-drama, I've taken risks in my life. I've had trials and tribulations just like every body else. You have to really think about who you are. You can't just go through life and sail threw.

I think that all of the scars and all of the layers that I've built over the years made me the person that I am today, and I'm pretty happy about that person.

I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

I write for myself things that I've gone through.

I've been things and seen places.

One day I looked at something in myself that I had been avoiding because it was too painful. Yet once I did, I had an unexpected surprise. Rather than self-hatred, I was flooded with compassion for myself because I realized the pain necessary to develop that coping mechanism to begin with.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

When I was in my 20s, I thought I knew who I was. And then as soon as I turned 30, I realized that person has bruises and bumps and dark parts. And you kind of go, well, that's it. I'd rather embrace it than force myself to change.

Emotional messiness is my reason for life. In acting, it's so important.

The experience of the human, male or female, cannot be completely defined by one startling, surprising, or gigantic life experience.

I think it is the fact that I want to quit that keeps me going. It's very complicated. But I think part of this whole exploration with every job that I do is, in terms of overcoming fear and by overcoming the fear, I feel so much more complete, and I learn something new about myself.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!

Everything I have ever written about has been about what's going on inside of us.