Dani Shapiro Quotes
When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.

Quotes to Explore
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If only one in 1,000 people that I talk to goes on to write a good book, that's one more good book that I've helped along... and maybe it will be a book I love myself five or 10 years down the line.
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I can think of no one that my grandparents knew, that told me stories and that I experienced myself, had any sense of social inferiority growing up in segregated Washington. None whatsoever.
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When you have that connection to say, 'I'm going to play for something bigger than myself,' man, you have a chance to do something good.
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I've made up little mantras for myself, catchphrases from a screenwriting book that doesn't exist. One is 'Write the movie you'd pay to go see.' Another is 'Never let a character tell me something that the camera can show me.'
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I'm not on fire for the Lord, so I tried to make myself generate this fire for the Lord.
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I read comics and I did science, and never really put them together until I accidentally found myself in the middle of one.
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Back then I said to myself 'screw football.' Actually I just took part in this camp as there was nothing better for me to do. They also didn't draft me because they thought I was too wild and undisciplined.
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I acted at school but got very bad parts - things that they'd made up in Shakespeare plays like 'Guard 17' - so I wrote plays and gave myself parts, then I wrote sketches, then I did stand-up. Even in the school nativity I was the emu in the manger.
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I hate committing myself to anything. It's probably the lack of discipline, honestly. I'm probably a spoiled brat worried about getting my way every time.
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I'm always trying to do the impossible to please people. It comes from not being secure in myself and not looking at the things within I have to fix. Sometimes you keep going because you don't want to face the truth.
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I love talking about myself.
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When a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.
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I'm guilty of it myself, sort of thinking, 'Classic novels: snoozeville.' But there is a huge amount of wonderful material.
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I like to think of my customer and make sure that season after season she is getting what she wants. Ultimately, I suppose I have an image of myself. That is the person I am designing for - a woman who loves and appreciates fashion and luxury, and somebody who wants to feel empowered with the best version of themselves.
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I pride myself on not being run of the mill. I don't want to be your umpteenth Fantine in 'Les Miz.'
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I will reveal the secrets behind these doors.
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I never set out to become 'famous.' I mean, when you're 14 you think 'I'm gonna become a writer and people will want my autograph and that'll be cool,' but you grow up and you learn that's just not how the world works. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be published and if I did it probably wouldn't be a big deal.
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I did a play called 'On Golden Pond' in a dinner theater in Maine and then went to New York for a talent competition having put together a three-man juggling routine and some one-liners and I got myself an agent from that.
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I don't know a lot about politics.
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I have 'Happy Birthday' in multiple languages on my iPod - I like to play it at company birthday parties.
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Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
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I enjoy worldbuilding very much. I generally start with an approximation. With 'Flesh and Spirit' and 'Breath and Bone,' because I was thinking of a world on the brink of a dark age, I began with the sense of Roman Britain. But I purposely set the geography to match something other than Britain - which has been overdone.
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Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
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When it comes to the personal essays I write, I just convince myself that no one will ever read them.