“There are two types of lazy bosses. One is so lazy that they make you do not only your own work but theirs too. Worse, they lie to you about it, unloading all responsibility for their actions. The other is so lazy that not only do they not do their own work but they can't even be bothered to provide you work to do. These bosses lie as well, but only to themselves, passively. The first is the hardest boss to work for, the second the easiest.”

“Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.”

“I have always loved quitting jobs. Whether because the job itself was repugnant or the people working at it with me, I have always held my right to quit my job as one of my most sacred privileges. An entire ritual surrounds this shedding of employment. First, there is the glorious moment when, after the unpleasantness of my position and my general unhappiness become overwhelmingly apparent to me, I say to myself (and I quote), “Fuck this. I don’t have to take this shit anymore. They think they can make me do what they want, but I’m out of here.” Ah, there it is, the almost orgasmic release I feel when I first make the profane declaration to myself, the feeling of reclaimed power coursing invisibly through me. But not just that: this singular moment, this coveted private knowledge is formed into a golden kernel and popped into existence again in my mind as a reaction to every unfortunate work-related moment I’m forced to endure before I make my destined departure. It’s such a glorious thing, the harboring of this secret knowledge, that in itself it has kept me at many a job even longer than I had originally intended, because just knowing that I would soon be free was the most effective of panaceas. So much so that there were times when even though it was impossible for me to quit I would say the same words to myself and mercifully delude my conscious mind that I could get the hell out of there if I wanted to.”

“I was participating in something horrible, and my only defense is that I was motivated by my own fear, which of course is no defense at all.”

“You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.”

“What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?'No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged.”

“I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding evidence of myself there, after being told my footprints did not exist on that sand. I think the work of the great white writers is important, but I think it's most important when it's negotiating me and my people, because I am as arrogant and selfish a reader as any other.”