Working by Studs Terkel and adapted by Harvey Pekar, r. Dec. 2025

 p. xxi Nora Watson may have said it most succinctly. "I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly-line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people."

p. 99 "I get up about noon. I would only consider myself outside the norm because of the way other people live. They're constantly reminding me I'm abnormal. I could never bear to live the dull lives that most people live, locked up in offices. I live in absolute freedom. I do what I do because I want to do it. What's wrong with making a living doing something interesting?" (jazz musician)

p. 101 "Hundreds of times I've gone to work thinking, oh my God, I hate to think of playing tonight. It's going to be awful. But something on that given night takes place and I'm excited before it's over. Does that make sense? If you have that kind of night, you're not aware of the time, because of this thing that hits you." (jazz musician)

p. 104 "Real talent takes a long time to mature, to learn how to bring what character you have into sound, into your playing, not the instrument, but the style of music you're trying to create should be an extension of you. And this takes a whole life." (jazz musician)

p. 160 "Peace and quiet and privacy have meant a great deal to me since I made my escape. Of course I'm a has-been. Radio itself is a has-been. But the quiz kids achieved history and I'm proud to have been part of it. ...The reason I like this job is that my mind is at ease all day long..." (greenhouse worker and former child genius)

p. 162 He dropped out of high school. "It's a good way to go. Take what you can stand and don't take any more than that. It's what God put the tongue in your mouth for. If it don't taste right, you spit it out." (carpenter)

p. 163 "Any work, you kneel down – it's a kind of worship. It's part of the holiness of things, work, yes. Just like drawing breath is. It's necessary. If you don't breathe, you're dead. It's kind of a sacrament, too." (carpenter)

The Fool's Progress by Edward Abbey, r. Jun. 2023

 p. 7 No one has a right to complain about life because no one is compelled to endure it.

p. 31 She bought the uniform: the Nike shoes, the flimsy erotic Adidas track shorts, the heavy-duty reinforced breast sling, the long-billed sunshade, the AM/FM Walkman radio headset, and commenced to laboring up and down the streets with Eric Clapton and James Taylor bawling in her ears, the jogger's look of smug pain and spiritual fortitude on her face. Favoring her sore foot, she gulped the dust and grime and noxious gases of the passing motor traffic.

p. 103 Onward, through the scrubby woods and past a solitary winter-shaggy horse in a huge and lonely field. The field looks lonely, not the horse. Why is that?

p. 150 Nobody paid [his dad] any attention and he knew it and the knowledge made him angry and lonely and sick in his heart. Joe Lightcap was not a philosopher; he took ideas seriously.

p. 181 There's two ways to be rich: (1) sweat and scheme and grovel for money and never get it anyhow; or (2) live the simple life. Sit down.

p. 258 What is the perfect robot anyhow but a properly processed human being? a soundly pussywhipped American male?

p. 301 Very deep is the well of the past. Shall we not call it – bottomless? What is our history but a vivid and continuous dream? We skim over the roadway bearing northeast to Kansas, me and my mortal dog, and the infinite dimensions of the recent past – a mere one century – make the brain giddy, the mind reel, the heart to swoon.

p. 329 Yes, it was a good sweet job. Old Gibbsie was a good superintendent. The United States government was a government. Henry Lightcap had found his niche, his slot, his cranny, his refuge in the vast vermiculate edifice of the American socioeconomy. And he kept it too, off and on, for the next fifteen years, working five, six months a year in various national parks and national forests, through national chaos and international calamity. Brother Will might disapprove, thinking such work unworthy of a full-grown man, little better than welfare, but for Henry Lightcap – a "fool-grown man," as he liked to explain, such a part-time occupation made the ideal vocation. Henry Lightcap needed those half years free. Why? For what? For the sake of freedom itself, he told his inner critic. Liberty like virtue is its own reward, the only reward it's likely to get. And for the sake of simplicity – la vie philosophique.

p. 334 To be sexually attractive is to be perpetually on guard. A pretty girl lives in a state of constant siege. And how we loved it-the tension, the conflict, the promise of delight.

p. 435 ... and what did all that laborious reading gain him? Couldn't say. He remembered best not the development of character or the unraveling of plot or the structure of an argument – philosophy is an art form, not a science – but simply the quality of the author's mind. That part remained and by that standard alone he finally judged his author and either threw the book aside or read it through and searched out more by the same writer. And that drive also, the mania to know and understand, it too waned somewhat with the passing of years, until he found himself again alone...

p. 481 Again Henry gazed out the window. A swirl of little pale birds, like confetti, like a net of lace, exfoliated from the sky and draped themselves upon an Aleppo pine. Water sprinklers jetted in explosive circles, drenching the hospital lawns. Just plain folks walked about. The world continued, bland and blasé, while catastrophe opened beneath the one who cared.

An Island to Oneself by Tom Neale, r. Sep. 2015

p. 19 I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking…

p. 77 Almost without noticing it, I slipped into the routine that was to become my life. Early morning had a familiar sound for I was regularly awakened by a rooster just before dawn. I would lie there relaxed for a little, thinking how lucky I was to look forward to a day which was going to bring me nothing but satisfaction.

p. 141 I remember thinking, too, how vastly different their lives were going to be from mine once their pleasant cruise was over. Even when they reached Apia in Samoa there would be bright lights (of a sort), cars, busy streets, cinemas, hotels; so-called luxuries which, however desirable, exacted their own price in tensions, problems, congested humanity.

p. 215 I would get up in the morning, put on my pareu, brew my coffee and suddenly reflect that by rights I should be in a pair of long trousers, jangling a bunch of keys ready to open the store. I had escaped! That was the overwhelming sensation, that was what made those early days so unbelievably wonderful and precious: I had cheated authority, fate, life itself, and all by a miracle.