Work shapes our body, fills our thoughts and speech, stamps our character. The accountant bears the imprint from decades of vouchers as surely as the carpenter bears the weight from tons of lumber and the jolt from thousands of hammer swings. The plumber's forearms are speckled with burns from molten solder, and the banker's face bears a crease for every foreclosure. Whatever else we make through our labor, we also make ourselves. So we had better choose carefully what we do with our days, and how we do it, and why.
— Scott Russell Sanders, Writing from the Center