His parents separated when Wolff was five and his elder brother Geoffrey was twelve; he lived with his mother in a variety of places, including Seattle, Washington when he was an adolescent. After she remarried, they lived in Newhalem, a small company town in the North Cascade Mountains, where his stepfather, Robert Thompson, worked at Seattle City Light. His father and brother lived on the East Coast during this period. Geoffrey knew nothing about where his brother was until he entered Princeton.