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by spanhandler 2134 days ago
"You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you've got nothing to apologize for."

- Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates)

Advice given to a main character who's (spoilers?) smart and thoughtful enough to be deeply bored by and unhappy with anything like a normal career, while also easily doing well at such a job while hardly trying, but who also believes deeply that he's meant for something more artistic and intellectual and adventurous but is both entirely unmotivated to actually make that happen, and also probably not that smart.

And yes I felt attacked when I read the book :-)