“Llarimar had told him to do his best. That sounded like an awful lot of work. Unfortunately, doing nothing was beginning to seem like even MORE work.”

“I do not like work even when someone else is doing it.”

“Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.”

“That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself. ¶ That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God.”

“If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work in the world has been done against seeming impossibilities.”

“I make all this stuff in the studio, but I also work on these white elephants — like House or Untitled Monument — things that are incredibly ambitious, take an awful long time to do, involve a lot of controversy, an awful lot of people, and don't make any money particularly, but it's just because I need to make them.”

“They more than do their work, they take pride in it. Like Cinna.”

“Without even saying anything, just his eyes… It’s not like he forces you to do it, but the power that he has, it’s something in his spirit. It’s almost like intangible and kind of magical. He has an energy that kind of lifts you. Any doubt that you had is just gone. You just do it – it’s really simple. It was so easy to work with him.”

“In order to do a good job a person must like what he or she is doing… If you do things just because you have to, then you will never enjoy work. Nor will you do a good job if you do it simply out of a sense of duty. Stress is often a by-product of such passive or negative attitudes toward work. Paradoxically as it may sound, love of work can be the best medicine for workaholism.”

“He measured all his fellow workers by the test of professionalism, and a professional is a man who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.”