I have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is "depressing" because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don't seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; "witty… — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
Anybody can be very destructive in that position without at all meaning to be, and I know that I have been inadvertently destructive in the past for certain people on certain occasions. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to… — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good… — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
“But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark… — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
“He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.” — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
Work for most people is really very social, and the actual thinking is often done in community. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one could live… — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
I was giving up--being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter. — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
“Lose Faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are.” — Tobias Wolff Copy Share Image
