Quotes from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“Every man-made thing, be it a chair, a text, or a school, is thought made substance. It is the expression of someone's, or some groups, ideas and beliefs. The two-hundred year old double hung, six light sash window in the wall opposite my desk, out of which I am looking at this moment embodies ideas about houses and how we should live in them, tools, technologies, standards of craftsmanship, nature and much else. It is a material manifestation of the collective consciousness of its time and place channeled through the individuals who commissioned and made it".”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“When I look at a piece of furniture from across a room, I see form, style, scale, context, and intended use. As I approach it, I distinguish material, joinery, and proportions. When I get close enough to touch it, I take in details such as hardware, textures, finish, edge treatments, wood grain, quality, and comfort.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“I was becoming aware that a good life was not some Shangri-La waiting to be stumbled upon. One constructed it from the materials at hand.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“Only as I approached adulthood did I realize that life is a process of continual becoming.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“there are three different contexts in which one can participate in a creative field. For shorthand, I call them the first-person, second-person, and third-person voices. You”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

“skilled manual work offered spiritual rewards to which academic institutions and my parent’s social milieu were oblivious.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

Popular quotes

“[...] afirmaban que el Apocalipsis no era sino el día en que los sueños saldrían de la cárcel del dormir, pues la resurrección de los muertos que la gente concibe de forma trivial y metafísica, se produciría precisamente de ese modo. ¿No eran acaso los sueños mensajes enviados por ellos? Esta reivindicación secular de los muertos, este ruego, lamento, protesta, llámese como se quiera, será un día tomada en cuenta.”
― Ismail Kadare, quote from The Palace of Dreams

“Maté The moon was simply dying to tread the earth. She wanted to sample the fruit and to bathe in some river. Thanks to the clouds, she was able to come down. From sunset until dawn, clouds covered the sky so that no one could see the moon was missing. Nighttime on the earth was marvelous. The moon strolled through the forest of the high Paranà, caught mysterious aromas and flavors, and had a long swim in the river. Twice an old peasant rescued her. When the jaguar was about to sink his teeth into the moon’s neck, the old man cut the beasts throat with his knife; and when the moon got hungry, he took her to his house. “We offer you our poverty,” said the peasant’s wife, and gave her some corn tortillas. On the next night the moon looked down from the sky at her friends’ house. The old peasant had built his hut in a forest clearing very far from the villages. He lived there like an exile with his wife and daughter. The moon found that the house had nothing left in it to eat. The last corn tortillas had been for her. Then she turned on her brightest light and asked the clouds to shed a very special drizzle around the hut. In the morning some unknown trees had sprung up there. Amid their dark green leaves appeared white flowers. The old peasant’s daughter never died. She is the queen of the maté and goes about the world offering it to others. The tea of the maté awakens sleepers, activates the lazy, and makes brothers and sisters of people who don’t know each other. (86”
― Eduardo Galeano, quote from Genesis

“Of course, they were paying for more than the groceries. They were financing the parking valets, and the starched white tablecloths, and the waiters with rings in their ears and cobs up their butts, who acted like you were putting them out if you asked them to fetch you an extra helping of bread. They were paying for the fancy French name slapped on a filet of fish that used to be called the catch-of-the-day. He’d seen pretentious outfits like that in ports all over the world. A few had even cropped up here in Key West, and those he scorned most of all.”
― Sandra Brown, quote from Envy

“Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from The Blue Girl

“You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from The Arm of the Starfish

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.