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My father worked on assembly lines in Detroit while I was growing up. Every day, I watched him do what he needed to do to support the family. But he told me, 'Life is short. Do what you want to do.'

The thing is, it's that Detroiters are hard workers. We've always been hard workers, even when times are down. I've been able to take that with me, that work ethic, to help me build my career.

As with the factory, so with the office: in an assembly line, the smaller the piece of work assigned to any single individual, the less skill it requires, and the less likely the possibility that doing it well will lead to doing something more interesting and better paid.

When I was in Chicago, I was working as a carpenter while I was doing plays. I thought it'd be a fun set construction job, but it turned up to just be a straight-up factory.

To make money I picked up work as a busboy, valet parker, skateboard shop employee.

If my brother and I wanted money in our pockets, we had to get jobs - my first was at 15, at Burger King. We had to come up with ways to create an income.

My wife and I, unlike many intellectuals, spent five years working on assembly lines. We came to fully understand the criticisms of the industrial age, in which you are an appendage of a machine that sets the pace.

When you're on the way up, you have to take all the jobs because bills have to be paid.

I was raised on, 'You go get a nine-to-five job, earn your pay and work your way up.'

I was raised as a real worker: you know, you get out and get a real job.