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.

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

Want! You must want something. What do you want?

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

Most of us dont live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.

What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.

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

We each after a while have to become reconciled to what it is that our talents and appetites lead us to.

I recall that my workshop leaders were tactful in their ways of acquainting me with my shortcomings as a writer. So much so that I hardly realized they were doing it. I want always to keep that sort of thing in mind when I'm teaching. The way you get better in everything in this life is to make mistakes. Otherwise you're probably doing it right by accident. But you have to do everything wrong before you can really start with some authority to do it right.