Pie crust... it is a problem

Pie is so good, but I always have trouble with the crust. Like most of my jokes, I tend to overwork it.

Having recently finished Jeffrey Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything," I feel inspired to make a pie, and he has an allegedly perfect method of crust-making in there, but it looked like it took the patience of the Sphinx and the time that, well, people who work outside the home don't have.

Does anyone have a good recipe I can try? Or the perfect method?

How do you know when you've overworked it? I mean, is there a tipping point I can recognize and say "Ok, now one more knead and it's ruination?"