Are the tools without, which the carpenter puts forth his hands to, or are they and all the carpentry within himself; and would he not smile at the notion that chest or house is more than he? – C.A. Bartol, The Rising Faith, Chapter XI: Personality, 1873

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

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

For a craftsman like my father, nothing is more exasperating than to witness tool abuse. In particular, I remember a steel tape measure he gave me after I had somehow managed to lose the first twelve inches of it. – Richard Menzies, “If I Were A Carpenter,” RDMenzies.com, 2011