Harrington on Hold'Em Volume 2 has invaluable information on how to play in certain stages of tournaments, depending on stack sizes and blinds.

Although having said that, I regularly suffer from the same problems that you describe when I play live MTT's (weekly at my local pub). The people I play against tend to be calling stations, so stealing doesn't work. It's terribly hard to play in this situation when you go card dead and the blinds go up.

Of critical importance IMO, and something Harrington suggests, is to push hard _before_ you get into the situation where you will get called no matter what. Once you lose the ability to make the blinds fold you are pretty much toast.