| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: pass the open boudoir window, and was unable to help overhearing
the following scrap of dialogue. Mary Cavendish was saying in
the voice of a woman desperately controlling herself:
"Then you won't show it to me?"
To which Mrs. Inglethorp replied:
"My dear Mary, it has nothing to do with that matter."
"Then show it to me."
"I tell you it is not what you imagine. It does not concern you
in the least."
To which Mary Cavendish replied, with a rising bitterness:
"Of course, I might have known you would shield him."
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: a woman!
ALGERNON. The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to
her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.
JACK. Oh, that is nonsense.
ALGERNON. What about your brother? What about the profligate
Ernest?
JACK. Oh, before the end of the week I shall have got rid of him.
I'll say he died in Paris of apoplexy. Lots of people die of
apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they?
ALGERNON. Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort
of thing that runs in families. You had much better say a severe
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: countenance. And then, too, the lapse of years had drawn the fine,
yellow skin so close to the bones that it described a multitude of
wrinkles everywhere, either circular like the ripples in the water
caused by a stone which a child throws in, or star-shaped like a pane
of glass cracked by a blow; but everywhere very deep, and as close
together as the leaves of a closed book. We often see more hideous old
men; but what contributed more than aught else to give to the spectre
that rose before us the aspect of an artificial creation was the red
and white paint with which he glistened. The eyebrows shone in the
light with a lustre which disclosed a very well executed bit of
painting. Luckily for the eye, saddened by such a mass of ruins, his
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