Tobias Wolff Quotes

The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

If you're good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can't be wrong.

There is no amount of money in the world that will make you comfortable if you are not comfortable with yourself.

Your fate is to be yourself, both punishment and crime.

The more we are true to ourselves, the more we can connect with and contribute to the world.

When it comes to your career, you must always try and allow the positive aspects of your character to dictate what happens to you. Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.

If you cannot be at ease with yourself when alone, you will seek a relationship to cover up your unease. You can be sure that the unease will then reappear in some other form within the relationship, and you will probably hold your partner responsible for it.

You don't want to be victimized by your lesser talents.

I don't need to be famous. I'm not that ambitious. At this point, if I'm not sucked in, I'm never going to get sucked in. Being the so-called hot girl, I disconnect from that. It's not that deep.

Wish for nothing larger Than your own small heart.

I am a woman, I make mistakes. I make them often. God has given me a talent and that's it.

Some of us have a relentless urge to attempt what we can never be good at and neglect our true calling.

Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.

It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

Many times people will say, you know, you're such a great role model. Well, that's great, but at the end of the day, you have to learn to be your own best role model and learn what makes you happy, not necessarily what society thinks you're supposed to be or women that you look up to, what they're doing. I look at that as being a symbol in a blueprint, but never forget that who you are is what's most important.

I'm not a boy-writer, I've never been. I wanted to be a boy-writer when I was young, and I think that held me back. I wanted to be very clever, and funny, but I'm not very clever and not terribly funny. I've finally accepted my limits, and I do what I can do.

Feminine power isn't something we go out and acquire; it's already within us. It's something we become willing to experience. Something to admit we have

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses.

Let us learn to accept ourselves-accept the truth that we are capable in some directions and limited in others, that genius is rare, that mediocrity is a portion of almost all of us, but that we can contribute from the storehouse of our skills to the enrichment of our common life.

All envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to be envied.

And specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?

Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life?

Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving