Quotes from Spike Carlsen

No cabin is complete without a woodburning stove or fireplace, even if that cabin is in Death Valley. Gas

Gloves dried by the fire feel warmer, bread risen by the fire tastes better, tea made from water heated in a kettle over the fire makes you cozier.

One of the beauties of carpentry is the way pure theoretical math and the savagery of a swinging hammer merge. You

I better put on my tool belt so I can think," and

Mistakes are the dues you pay for living a full life. — Sophia Loren

This awesome world isn't just a spectator sport. It's symbiotic; it influences us, and we influence it." from A Walk Around the Block (Harper One)

Carpentry is a young person's sport. It builds you up physically for the first few years, then starts tearing you down.

To fill the jugs we kneel on jagged rock and force them underwater, using the muscle mechanics you'd use drowning a hippo. We

When you marry, you marry the whole person — not just the parts above the waterline. You get both the silk sails and the barnacles.

When you lash two boats together, you don't just join ropes, but sails and anchors as well. When

The quandary with life is you're halfway through before you realize it's a do-it-yourself project.

Mensch tracht, Gott lacht. (Man plans, God laughs.) —Yiddish proverb

When the last piece of drywall is hung, you won't even be able to tell this skeleton is there. But it's what makes a cabin, a cabin; so essential that when God started fiddling around with his second human being he didn't start with a heart, muscle, or brain. He started with a part of the skeleton: the rib.

When you dig a hole, be smarter than the shovel.

He is a woodworker; I'm a carpenter. We both work wood, but the way we approach it, and the tools we use, differ greatly.

We should be better craftsmen of our own lives.