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.
Tobias Wolff

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.
Tobias Wolff

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

Work for most people is really very social, and the actual thinking is often done in community.
Tobias Wolff

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.
Tobias Wolff

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

Because the more you write the more you're aware of the weight of your tradition and the difficulties of the form and the more you have already done that you do not want to do again.
Tobias Wolff