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

Good workmen never quarrel with their tools. – Lord Byron, Don Juan

I think objects made of wood by children, left to their own devices, if such there be, will assay ten percent wood, ninety percent nails. – Robert Paul Smith, “Where Did You Go?” “Out.” “What Did You Do?” “Nothing.”, 195

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