| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: and fast asleep when he came in. He talked to her while he
undressed, telling her anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that
he had gathered during the day. From his trousers pockets he took
a fistful of crumpled bank notes and a good deal of silver coin,
which he piled on the bureau indiscriminately with keys, knife,
handkerchief, and whatever else happened to be in his pockets. She
was overcome with sleep, and answered him with little half
utterances.
He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the
sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things
which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation.
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: catch the 10:30 at Euston.
"But she's no more aware of her beauty than a child," said Mr Bankes,
replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the
workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back of
his house. And he thought of Mrs Ramsay as he looked at that stir among
the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something
incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a
deer-stalker's hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in galoshes to
snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that
one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing
(they were carrying bricks up a little plank as he watched them), and work
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: gone out to meet Ralph Denham. But to her surprise William drew no
comfort from this probability.
"Once throw conventions aside," he began, "once do the things that
people don't do--" and the fact that you are going to meet a young man
is no longer proof of anything, except, indeed, that people will talk.
Cassandra saw, not without a pang of jealousy, that he was extremely
solicitous that people should not talk about Katharine, as if his
interest in her were still proprietary rather than friendly. As they
were both ignorant of Ralph's visit the night before they had not that
reason to comfort themselves with the thought that matters were
hastening to a crisis. These absences of Katharine's, moreover, left
|
