And I learned that it's a bad idea to curse if you're in trouble, but a good idea to sing, if you can.

— Tobias Wolff

A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.

— 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

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

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

— Tobias Wolff

In a world where the most consequential things happen by chance, or from unfathomable causes, you don't look to reason for help. You consort with mysteries... They have been killed in place of you - in your place. You don't think it out, not at the time, not in those terms, but you can't help but feel it, and go on feeling it. It's the close call you have to keep escaping from, the unending doubt that you have a right to your own life. It's the corruption suffered by everyone who lives on, that henceforth they must wonder at the reason and probe its justice.

— Tobias Wolff

In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all. In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. Furthermore, it toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.

— Tobias Wolff

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.

— Tobias Wolff

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.

— Tobias Wolff

I've allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful story.

— Tobias Wolff