| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: Waymarsh had kept on his great panama, and, as he now stood nearer
the door, his last look beneath the shade of it had turned again to
darkness and warning. "So do I! See here, Strether."
"I know what you're going to say. 'Quit this'?"
"Quit this!" But it lacked its old intensity; nothing of it
remained; it went out of the room with him.
III
Almost the first thing, strangely enough, that, about an hour
later, Strether found himself doing in Sarah's presence was to
remark articulately on this failure, in their friend, of what had
been superficially his great distinction. It was as if--he alluded
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: stairs," she repeated, fishing them up out of her mind by a phrase
which, coming back from some party, she had made to amuse her husband.
Dear, dear, Mrs Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this
incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her stocking?
How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where the maid was
always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered,
and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the exploits--interesting
perhaps, but limited after all--of that bird? Naturally, one had asked
her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them up at Finlay, which
had resulted in some friction with the Owl, her mother, and more calling,
and more conversation, and more sand, and really at the end of it, she had
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "She had told me this so often," Montes went on, regardless of the
courtesan's mockery, "that I had a lovely house fitted up in the heart
of that vast estate. I came back to France to fetch Valerie, and the
first evening I saw her--"
"Saw her is very proper!" said Carabine. "I will remember it."
"She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I
agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot.
Whether the devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant
that woman has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands--
never for one moment has she given me cause to suspect her!--"
"That is supremely clever!" said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson, who
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