It had never occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work til it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But is was so, and after all, he thought, why not?
Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?
When I was young, they used to call me 'foreman,' not because I was in charge, but because I did the work of four men.
Believe me, the man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, eats oftener a sweeter morsel, however coarse, than he who procures it by the labor of his brains.
Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home; But elegance, chief grace the garden shows, And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind.
When you grow up on a farm, you grow up fast.
The sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life.
Every time we give a musician the advice to give away the music and sell the T-shirt, we're saying, 'Don't make your living in this more elevated way. Instead, reverse this social progress, and choose a more physical way to make a living.' We're sending them to peasanthood, very much like the Maoists have.
Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work, and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty.
I used to roof hay barns for my father. It's dangerous work. Writing is much better.
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
I get up every morning and chop wood, and I pretty much do it seven days a week, and I like to do it. I still have time for my wife and my son, who's 14, and at this point, my head is still above water.
I don’t like the work but mother is dead and father brought me down [to the mines.] I had no choice. I have a harness on like a horse and pull carts. Large carts hold seven and a half hundredweight. [750 lbs.]
She was only 15 at the time.
I was blessed to grow up on a farm, and when you're a farm boy, exercise is part of your lifestyle. Like it or not, that environment makes you work out. On the farm, nature is your gym. You walk and run and swim and have to do a lot of work with animals too.
The wino and I know the pain of back bustin'.
Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.
We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one's big and second toes; there's work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving.
After all, game shows are not like working in a coal mine.
Labor is no disgrace.
My first job was with an auto plant, Kansas City - they treated you like slaves. From there I went back to Chicago, worked in steel mills, drove a cab, stuff like that.
When I was working, there was no digital. We actually worked; we used Polaroids.
I love weights, but it's too far to get to the gym. So I make the farm my gym: I split wood and haul tires and do work on the farm, and that's sort of my weight training portion.
My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and frying calf nuts.
To have the opportunity to be creative and clarify the nature of that creativity, there are definitely some long days, some 18-20 hour days with interviews or computer work, but I have a friend who is every bit as intelligent and creative as me who works at the mill.
