The beauty of words

I'm not sure how old I was when I fell in love with words, but it's a passionate affair that's been going on for at least 20 years now. I can remember learning new words when I was little, like "cascading," "egalitarian," "diaphanous," and "phantasmagorical," and thinking how certain words had a quality to them as they rolled off the tongue.
I still very much feel that way.
Since I've moved to Pennsylvania, some of the location names are truly fun to say,like,"Wissahickon," "Schyukill," "Manayunk," those are a few examples of words that I absolutely love to enunciate.
When I read anything, I'm always mindful of what words the author uses. Sometimes, writers have a tendency to use pretentious wording just to prop up sub-par writing, and that's annoying.
And it doesn't even have to be a matter of using big words to express a point. Just certain phrases will be etched in my memory for the rest of my life.
From the end of "The Prince of Tides," a passage that sticks with me is "In families there are no crimes past forgiveness and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man and every woman. At the end of every day I drive through the city of Charleston and I cross the bridge that will take me home. I feel the words building inside me, I can't stop them, or tell you why I say them, but as I reach the top of the bridge these words come to me in a whisper. I say these words as a prayer, as regret, as praise, I say: Lowenstein, Lowenstein."
From "The Great Gatsby," a good line is,"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."
My favorite poem is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. I named a dog T.S. Eliot Gaither once (I called him Eliot, so the other dogs wouldn't make fun of him), but that poem is absolutely breathtaking in its use of language. From the very beginning, I was hooked: "Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table..." It ends with "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown.
How amazing is that?
Of course, these passages serve another purpose with me; they make me wonder, can I ever create words that will uplift and inspire anyone to the extent that those have touched me and countless others?
Being a frustrated writer at heart, you become obsessed with words and language, but paralyzed by some sort of fear that you'll never be able to articulate what you want to say as succintly and beautifully as you picture it in your head.
I will write a book one day, and it will freak me out, and I'll probably have to go to a mental institution after I finish it, but I am determined to prove that I have something to say that other people want to hear.
And maybe someday, someone will quote my words on a blog or in a journal or even just to a friend and talk about how much those words are etched in their consciousness, and that will be worth it.