| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: He sat all night and burrowed through
Your book.... Oh, you'll be coy and he
Will simulate precosity,
And pedants both, you'll smile and smirk,
And leer, and hasten back to work....
'Twas this day week, sir, you returned
A theme of mine, from which I learned
(Through various comment on the side
Which you had scrawled) that I defied
The highest rules of criticism
For cheap and careless witticism....
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: child, this much is certain, my mother during her pregnancy had a
passion for gold, and I am the victim of a monomania, of a craving for
gold which must be gratified. Gold is so much of a necessity of life
for me, that I have never been without it; I must have gold to toy
with and finger. As a young man I always wore jewelry, and I carried
two or three hundred ducats about me wherever I went."
He drew a couple of gold coins from his pocket and showed them to me
as he spoke.
"I can tell by instinct when gold is near. Blind as I am, I stop
before a jeweler's shop windows. That passion was the ruin of me; I
took to gambling to play with gold. I was not a cheat, I was cheated,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: The rate at which the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed
to impart wildness to the half-drunken crowd. Beer glasses were
emptied at a gulp and conversation became a rapid chatter.
The smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward
some unseen falls. Pete and Maggie entered the hall and took chairs
at a table near the door. The woman who was seated there made
an attempt to occupy Pete's attention and, failing, went away.
Three weeks had passed since the girl had left home. The air of
spaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its direct
effect in the peculiar off-handedness and ease of Pete's ways toward her.
She followed Pete's eyes with hers, anticipating with smiles
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
