There's a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.

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

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

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

quote by Tobias Wolff
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When I was about 14 or 15 I decided to become a writer and never for a moment since have I wanted to do anything else.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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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.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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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.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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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.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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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.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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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.

quote by Tobias Wolff
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