Tobias Wolff Quotes

The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.

Someone said adversity builds character, but someone else said adversity reveals character. I'm pleasantly surprised with my resilience. I persevere, and not just blindly. I take the best, get rid of the rest, and move on, realizing that you can make a choice to take the good.

I think I'm one of life's copers. And picking myself up and dusting myself off and starting all over again is one of my mottoes, actually.

The force of character is cumulative.

The thing that I love about Rick Grimes is that he pulls himself off the canvas even when he has been pummeled to the ground so many times. And either he gets up by himself - he drags himself up - or he is helped up by loved ones around him.

Paule Marshall does not let the black women in her fiction lose. While they lose friends, lovers, husbands, homes, or jobs, they always find themselves.

I have been fascinated with survival and having to go on no matter what. That always appealed to me.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

The great ones in life are not those who are handed silver spoons. Their excellence comes from digging into the raw ore of their own character, through hard work, persistence and faith turning whatever they touch into gold.

It's not being homeless that matters. It's about who you are. Keep striving and you become somebody. Quit and you also become somebody.. but not the same person.

All I've undergone I will keep on.

She was tough in the best sense of the word. She'd taken blows, the disappointments, and had worked her way through them. Some people, he knew, would have buckled under, found a clutch, or given up. But she had carved a place for herself and made it work.

Life, like classical music, is full of difficult passages that are conquered as much through endurance and determination as through any particular skill.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark. A mouse may find a hole, be the room ever so full of cats.

I am not who I was,' he whispered, gripping the edges of the column, 'but I know who I am.'... 'And I won't give up.

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.

If you're going through hell, Keep on going, don't slow down, If you're scared, don't show it You might get out Before the devil even knows you're there.

Work hard, think fast and you'll last.

Makes you grow up quick. Hard work makes you strong. I work hard every day; that's where I get my strength. That and knowing who I am.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.

Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.

As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.

The path to survival was to never give up on the small things.

Don't get discouraged: it is often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock. Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.