Quote of the Day (Conrad Aiken, on Seeking an Elusive Word or Name)

“You know, without my telling you, how sometimes
     A word or name eludes you, and you seek it
     Through running ghosts of shadow,—leaping at it,
     Lying in wait for it to spring upon it,
     Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound:
     Until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest,
     You hear it, see it flash among the branches,
     And scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.”— American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, short-story writer, novelist, and critic Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), The House of Dust: A Symphony (1920)

Quote of the Day (Emily Dickinson, on the Death and Life of a Word)

“A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just begins

to live that day.”– American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “A Word is Dead,” Complete Poems (1924)

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on Words and Experiences)

“Words form the thread on which we hang our experiences.” —English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Collected Essays (1959)

Quote of the Day (Lemony Snicket, on the Importance of ‘One Misheard Word’)

“In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied ‘I love you back’ and not ‘I love your back’ before you continue the conversation.”— Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler), Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid (2007)

Quote of the Day (Theodore Dreiser, on Words as ‘Vague Shadows’)

“Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.” —Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)