Quotes by Tobias Wolff

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.

People

Teaching

Writing

But a lot of writers – and I’m one of them – do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it’s a goad and does keep you alert and restless.

Doe

Littles

Writing

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

Insightful

Order

Stories

Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

Fearlessness

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.

Boys

Pride

Teaching

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

Believe

Different

Writing

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 stories,” in which every problem is the occasion for a joke; “upbeat” stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We’re grown ups now.

Depressing

Stories

Witty

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.

Leader

Mistake

Teaching

I teach one semester a year, and this year I’m just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

Funny

Graduation

Inspirational

It’s probably why I’m a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.

Past

People

Time

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Art

Believe

Best Short

Boys

Certain

Character

Cutting

Dark

Depressing

Depth

Desire

Different

Doe

Dream

Expression

Fall

Fearlessness

Forests

Funny

Giving

Graduation

Heart

Home

Imagine

Innocence

Insightful

Inspirational

Joy

Knowing

Lasts

Leader

Light

Littles

Live Life

Love

Maturity

Mean

Memories

Men

Mistake

Needs

Optimistic

Order

Our Lives

Pain

Particular

Past

People

Pride

Real

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

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The Behaviour Diary

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The Dating Diary

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The Relationship Therapist

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Quotes by Tobias Wolff

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.

But a lot of writers – and I’m one of them – do tend to feel dissatisfied. It makes you a little hard to live with, but it’s a goad and does keep you alert and restless.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.

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.

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.

I teach one semester a year, and this year I’m just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

It’s probably why I’m a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.

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Topics by Tobias Wolff

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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