106 Quotes by Tobias Wolff

Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he’d led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity – its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

The human heart is a dark forest

I'm a survivor, " I said. But I didn't think that claim would carry much weight in an obituary.

That room—once you enter it, you never really leave. You can forget you’re there, you can go on as if you hold the reins, that the course of your life, yea even its length, will reflect the force of your character and the wisdom of your judgments. And then you hit an icy patch on a turn one sunny March day and the wheel in your hands becomes a joke and you no more than a spectator to your own dreamy slide toward the verge, and then you remember where you are.

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

I had never seen such sorrow; it appalled me. And I was even more appalled by her attempts to overcome it, because they so plainly, pathetically failed and in failing opened up a view of the world I had only begun to suspect, where wounds did not heal, and things did not work out for the best

We are made to persist.that's how we find out who we are.

I recognized no obstacle to miraculous change but the incredulity of others. This was an idea that died hard, if it ever really died at all.

I was a sitting duck myself, and Arthur had a map of my nerves.