| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: color--he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other
car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards
beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life
violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark
blood with the dust.
Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open
her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left
breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen
for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the
corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous
vitality she had stored so long.
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: tart and some preserved prunes; then to all this the good woman added
polite remarks about Madame, who appeared to be in better health,
Mademoiselle, who had grown to be "superb," and Paul, who had become
singularly sturdy; she spoke also of their deceased grandparents, whom
the Liebards had known, for they had been in the service of the family
for several generations.
Like its owners, the farm had an ancient appearance. The beams of the
ceiling were mouldy, the walls black with smoke and the windows grey
with dust. The oak sideboard was filled with all sorts of utensils,
plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. The children laughed when
they saw a huge syringe. There was not a tree in the yard that did not
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: In fabulous day; some hundred years ago;
And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
That mingled with the universal mirth,
Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe;
They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
To swift destruction the whole race of birds.
And a town-meeting was convened straightway
To set a price upon the guilty heads
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
Levied black-mail upon the garden beds
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