| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to her
daughter, "I don't know what would have become of that poor boy."
Mr Verloc extended as much recognition to Stevie as a man not
particularly fond of animals may give to his wife's beloved cat;
and this recognition, benevolent and perfunctory, was essentially
of the same quality. Both women admitted to themselves that not
much more could be reasonably expected. It was enough to earn for
Mr Verloc the old woman's reverential gratitude. In the early
days, made sceptical by the trials of friendless life, she used
sometimes to ask anxiously: "You don't think, my dear, that Mr
Verloc is getting tired of seeing Stevie about?" To this Winnie
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: Their clothing hardly bears thinking about. And the congestion
of them! Everybody was jostling against everybody in those awful
towns. In an uproar. People were run over and crushed by the
hundred; every year in London the cars and omnibuses alone killed
or disabled twenty thousand people, in Paris it was worse; people
used to fall dead for want of air in the crowded ways. The
irritation of London, internal and external, must have been
maddening. It was a maddened world. It is like thinking of a
sick child. One has the same effect of feverish urgencies and
acute irrational disappointments.
'All history,' he said, 'is a record of a childhood....
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: providing much cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a
costly rug and the baroness's gown.
"Well now, good-bye, or you'll never get washed, and I shall have
on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you
would advise a knife to his throat?"
"To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his
lips. He'll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,"
answered Vronsky.
"So at the Francais!" and, with a rustle of her skirts, she
vanished.
Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go,
Anna Karenina |
