| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: To gaze into the depths of blue of the child's eyes and pronounce
their loveliness a trick of premature cunning was to be guilty
of a cynicism in preference to which I naturally preferred
to abjure my judgment and, so far as might be, my agitation.
I couldn't abjure for merely wanting to, but I could repeat
to Mrs. Grose--as I did there, over and over, in the small hours--
that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart,
and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell
to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty.
It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all,
I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: LUX FACTA EST
During the second year, precisely at the point in this history
which the reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of
the Luxembourg was interrupted, without Marius himself being quite
aware why, and nearly six months elapsed, during which he did not set
foot in the alley. One day, at last, he returned thither once more;
it was a serene summer morning, and Marius was in joyous mood,
as one is when the weather is fine. It seemed to him that he had
in his heart all the songs of the birds that he was listening to,
and all the bits of blue sky of which he caught glimpses through
the leaves of the trees.
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: see if she, too, saw, but kept my eyes, as though fascinated, on
that silent black line approaching through the darkness.
"Will they leap now--now--now?" I asked myself with every beat
of my pulse.
It could not be much longer--they were now so close that each
black, tense form was in clear outline not fifty feet away.
Chapter XXIII.
WE ARE TWO.
Whether I would have been able to rouse myself to action
before the shock of the assault was actually upon us, I shall never
know.
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