Top 27 Quotes by Tobias Wolff

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.

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

Most of us don't live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.

That, for me, is a very important test of a young writer's commitment because most of them are going to have to continue doing that when they've finished the program.

Because I don't have to be careful of people's feelings when I teach literature, and I do when I'm teaching writing.

Of course it's why you want to become a writer - because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

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

Like so many writers I started writing stories because I didn't have much time for anything else.

And you can tell the writers who do it - Robert Stone, for example, who with each new novel is doing something new. I appreciate that in other writers.

The short story, on the other hand, is the perfect American form.