| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: course not, no, no, no! He tried to keep a firm hold of the idea.
Not mad, not mad. He stumbled as he ran blindly up the steps
repeating fast and ever faster those words wherein seemed to lie
his salvation. He saw Nina standing there, and wished to say
something to her, but could not remember what, in his extreme
anxiety not to forget that he was not going mad, which he still
kept repeating mentally as he ran round the table, till he
stumbled against one of the arm-chairs and dropped into it
exhausted. He sat staring wildly at Nina, still assuring himself
mentally of his own sanity and wondering why the girl shrank from
him in open-eyed alarm. What was the matter with her? This was
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: to the left. You will come out onto the high road, and then
turn to the right.'
'And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the
winter way?' asked Nikita.
'The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some
bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one
with branches--and that's the way.'
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the
outskirts of the village.
'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse.
Master and Man |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks,
with the fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the
fire one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of
the little child. She idly watched him as he occasionally
climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood beside
the brands. The wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair,
and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction;
the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still,
and the smoke went up straight.
While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy's
form visibly started--he slid down the bank and ran
Return of the Native |
