| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: about it now, for there's Matilda, I see, in the park, and I must
go and open my budget to her. But, however, Hatfield was most
uncommonly audacious, unspeakably complimentary, and
unprecedentedly tender - tried to be so, at least - he didn't
succeed very well in THAT, because it's not his vein. I'll tell
you all he said another time.'
'But what did YOU say - I'm more interested in that?'
'I'll tell you that, too, at some future period. I happened to be
in a very good humour just then; but, though I was complaisant and
gracious enough, I took care not to compromise myself in any
possible way. But, however, the conceited wretch chose to
Agnes Grey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: and saw her walking rapidly along the street towards the City. Then
she vanished.
"She must have gone to meet Mr. Denham," Cassandra exclaimed.
"Goodness knows!" William interjected.
The incident impressed them both as having something queer and ominous
about it out of all proportion to its surface strangeness.
"It's the sort of way Aunt Maggie behaves," said Cassandra, as if in
explanation.
William shook his head, and paced up and down the room looking
extremely perturbed.
"This is what I've been foretelling," he burst out. "Once set the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have
been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed
(even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if
sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak
and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the
person who entrapped me.
The most influential books, and the truest in their
influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader
to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact;
they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards
unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the
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