Today's Stichomancy for Robert De Niro

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato:

of the mortal. From him they received the immortal soul, but themselves made the body to be its vehicle, and constructed within another soul which was mortal, and subject to terrible affections--pleasure, the inciter of evil; pain, which deters from good; rashness and fear, foolish counsellors; anger hard to be appeased; hope easily led astray. These they mingled with irrational sense and all-daring love according to necessary laws and so framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element, they gave the mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast, parted off from the head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house the women's apartments are divided from the men's, the cavity of the thorax was divided into two parts, a higher and a lower. The higher of the two, which is the seat of courage

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris:

the sky, "to threaten his friend for speaking truth?"

"Now he's even praying! I can't believe this!"

"'We cannot see around corners,' says Germulphius, 'so what is left to the man who refuses to see in a straight line?'"

"Someone like your wife," answered the glasses. "No doubt by now she's found twelve more insupportably ridiculous assertions in your paper on aperceptual phenomenalism."

"Well, at least my wife reads my papers. At least my wife can read."

"My wife is an avid reader of literature."

"Since when did the television listings become 'literature'? That's the most transparent semantic ploy I have ever heard."

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:

two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look at his face -- it's too gashly."

I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas:

"Restless, stooping, and bowlegged?"

"In truth, you draw Master Boxtel's portrait feature by feature."

"And the tulip, sir? Is it not in a pot of white and blue earthenware, with yellowish flowers in a basket on three sides?"

"Oh, as to that I am not quite sure; I looked more at the flower than at the pot."

"Oh, sir! that's my tulip, which has been stolen from me. I came here to reclaim it before you and from you."

"Oh! oh!" said Van Systens, looking at Rosa. "What! you are

The Black Tulip