Tobias Wolff

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

— Tobias Wolff

You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light. Everything aspires to the light. You don't…

— Tobias Wolff

We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is…

— Tobias Wolff

“But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog…

— Tobias Wolff

One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love.

— Tobias Wolff

“He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.”

— Tobias Wolff

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

Work for most people is really very social, and the actual thinking is often done in community.

— Tobias Wolff

Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to…

— Tobias Wolff

One can imagine a world without essays. It would be a little poorer, of course, like a world without chess, but one…

— Tobias Wolff

I was giving up--being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter.

— Tobias Wolff

“Lose Faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we…

— Tobias Wolff

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem…

— Tobias Wolff

It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form,…

— Tobias Wolff

When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our…

— Tobias Wolff

That, for me, is a very important test of a young writer's commitment because most of them are going to have to…

— Tobias Wolff

“..he felt no more than a boy again-but a very well-versed boy who couldn't help thinking of the scene described by these…

— Tobias Wolff

In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina…

— Tobias Wolff

“Storytelling is an escape from the jail of the self, leading to the ultimate adventure--seeing life through the eyes of another.”

— Tobias Wolff

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all…

— Tobias Wolff

The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.

— Tobias Wolff

There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

— Tobias Wolff

Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one…

— Tobias Wolff

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody.

— Tobias Wolff

“They’ll die, and then they’ll be dead.”

— Tobias Wolff