Tobias Wolff Quotes

All you can write is what you see.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

The thing that inspires me most is reading and just observing the people around me. I think those are the two things that make me want to write.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

I write about what I know, what I live, what I observe.

Our job is not to set things right but to see them right.

I look at you and I write down what I hear.

I try to find the picture, not create it.

I'm simply trying to tell the truth about human behaviour as I see it.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.

A writer's work is to witness things.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

In my writing, I focus lenses. I'm almost always seeing when I am writing.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

Portraiture keeps me humble. It's simple and straightforward. There is nothing more interesting I can make up than the figure sitting right in front of me.

If you have value as an artist it's probably going to be in your capacity to let things inside you get past things that are placed there to keep you from telling the truth. The more you see things as clearly and coldly as you can, the more value you're going to have.

Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it when great poets or true artists - the prophets and the priests of our day - present it to us in garments spick and span, following the fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind.

The truth cannot be deceptive, and one who sees it cannot be deceived.

The camera never lies, man. I've learned that. If you allow it, it will see right through you, which is kind of cool.