Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine the future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.

This Boy's Life (1989) concerns itself with the author's adolescence in Seattle and then Newhalem a remote company town in the North Cascade mountains of Washington State. In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981) a collection of short stories. Wolff however repudiates such claims.

He is known for his memoirs particularly This Boy's Life (1989) and his short stories. He has also written two novels.