'I no more have a work ethic than I have self-discipline'

'When I hear talk about 'the work ethic' I puke. CEOs talk about it, whose annual salaries average one hundred and thirty times their workers' wages. Whatever the phrase purports to describe, it is not an ethic; it is not an idea of work's value or a moral dictate but a feeling or tone connected to work, and it is temperamental and cultural. Studs Terkel's stonemason has it, and his line-worker does not; instead, the line-worker has work-anger, or work-malevolence, which is entirely appropriate. Mind you, the stonemason works alone with his hands solving problems that change with every stone. He does something that he can look at and put his name to. He can measure what he has done in walls and buildings not in units of the same thing, like so many Chevrolet Impalas or so many distributor cap linings. Shades of John Ruskin. I no more have a work ethic that I have self-discipline. I have so many pages a day, so many books and essays.'

Donald Hall, 2003, Life Work

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