He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow. —— Thomas Nye, quoted in "Ted Hughes, 68, a Symbolic Poet And Sylvia Plath's Husband, Dies," New York Times, Oct 30, 1998

So far, I have tried to intimate, through meshed parallels and contrasts, something of the nature, the quiddity, of Japanese and of American literature. —— Ihab Hassan, "In the Mirror of the Sun: Reflections on Japanese and American Literature, Basho to Cage," World Literature Today, March 1, 1995

Here is the invention of biography. Before James Boswell's Life of Johnson was published in 1791, there had been "Lives" aplenty, but nothing with the exactitude and impertinence that we have come to expect from the searching biographer. "Lives" were usually reverential narratives attached to bowdlerised editions of a dead person's correspondence; occasionally, and more entertainingly, they were acts of revenge by enemies or critics. In neither case, even if they contained "facts", could they actually be believed. Boswell set biography a new ambition: capturing the copiousness and quiddity of a personality - the self peculiarly revealed in odd quirks and, especially, in unpredictable, evanescent talk. —— John Mullan, 'Dreaming up the Doctor'; Guardian, Nov 11, 2000

It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn. —— Michel de Montaigne, "Of Books"

She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits. —— John Brewer in 'The Pleasures of the Imagination'

I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had promised to write and wondered how I would go about it -- his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students. —— Saul Bellow in 'Ravelstein'