Who answers when you knock on wood? – J. Drummond, People, 1969

The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp… – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass

What is a workman without his tooles? – Proverb quoted by Heywood, 1546

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