One of the first Bible verses I remember my mother quote is Proverbs 25:11.

From the King James Version:

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver."

I think she loved the imagery of the verse... it was both opulence and simplicity, beauty in a still-life that...

I've always been fascinated with power of words. I think it began in elementary school and my fascination with Katherine Lee Bates, the author of America, the Beautiful—you know, “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.”  As I read about her, I...