| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after
attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent
way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks--at intervals she
appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: "You
promised!" into his ear.
The reluctance to go home was not confined to wayward men. The hall was at
present occupied by two deplorably sober men and their highly indignant
wives. The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised
voices.
"Whenever he sees I'm having a good time he wants to go home."
"Never heard anything so selfish in my life."
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: comes the longing to rise which every creature has known or will
know? Motion is a great soul, and its alliance with matter is just
as difficult to account for as the origin of thought in man. In
these days science is one; it is impossible to touch politics
independent of moral questions, and these are bound up with
scientific questions. It seems to me that we are on the eve of a
great human struggle; the forces are there; only I do not see the
General.
"November 25.
"Believe me, dear uncle, it is hard to give up the life that is in
us without a pang. I am returning to Blois with a heavy grip at my
Louis Lambert |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: allowed her soup to grow cold.
The first night that Rudie called, Pa Keller thought it a
great joke. He sat out on the porch with Rudie and Ivy and talked
baseball, and got up to show Rudie how he could have got the goat
of that Keokuk catcher if only he had tried one of his famous
open-faced throws. Rudie looked politely interested, and laughed
in all the right places. But Ivy didn't need to pretend. Rudie
Schlachweiler spelled baseball to her. She did not think of her
caller as a good-looking young man in a blue serge suit and a white
shirtwaist. Even as he sat there she saw him as a blonde god
standing on the pitcher's mound, with the scars of battle on his
Buttered Side Down |
