We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are. - Tobias Wolff
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 - Tobias Wolff
The human heart is a dark forest - Tobias Wolff
There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. 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. - 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. - Tobias Wolff
Whatever it is that makes closeness possible between people also puts them in the way of hard feelings if that closeness ends. - Tobias Wolff