| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: idle; he is always at it. What is to be said? He is crazy and does not
know his business. I have seen him, monsieur, filing and forging his
instruments and eating black bread with an appetite that I envied him
--I, who have the best table in Paris.
"Yes, Excellenza, in a quarter of an hour you shall know the man I am.
I have introduced certain refinements into Italian cookery that will
amaze you! Excellenza, I am a Neapolitan--that is to say, a born cook.
But of what use is instinct without knowledge? Knowledge! I have spent
thirty years in acquiring it, and you see where it has left me. My
history is that of every man of talent. My attempts, my experiments,
have ruined three restaurants in succession at Naples, Parma, and
Gambara |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: taken in Trinity Quad--the man on my left is now the Earl of Dorcaster."
It was a photograph of half a dozen young men in blazers loafing in an
archway through which were visible a host of spires. There was Gatsby,
looking a little, not much, younger--with a cricket bat in his hand.
Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace
on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with
their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.
"I'm going to make a big request of you to-day," he said, pocketing his
souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something
about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some nobody. You see,
I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there
The Great Gatsby |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady,
with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind
was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the
puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and
her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get,
though there is was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who
had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that
they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her
except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he
got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the
Peter Pan |
