Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry…. Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work… – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, interview, The Paris Review, 1981

The feel and beauty of finely crafted wood – the refreshing smell of your workshop – the absorbing joy of cutting and joining that makes the hours race by – These are the reasons you love woodworking. – Jack Neff, Make Your Woodworking Pay for Itself, 1996

The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659

Woodworking minus patience equals firewood. – Author unknown