Random

 I am going to pick a line from a book I am reading by randomly opening said book and seeing where my gaze lands. It is a bit of a risk. What if I land on an uninteresting line - which is very possible, probable even. I’ll look a right fool. Well maybe not a fool ... the reader will understand surely that fate played a trick on me ... though maybe there’s no need to go bringing something mysterious like fate into this, it’s just a random event, and regardless, random or not, the ordinariness of the line doesn’t reflect badly on me in any personal sense. Though then again maybe there’d be another reader out there who’d be exalting at my humiliation if the above does play out: “Look at him now, the fool!” It would make his morning.

So it seems there’s more at stake than I’d imagined. Be gentle on me reader. There’s still time for me to back out and leave this alone but no, I will be true to my word. Of course you have no way of knowing how true that word will really be - I could in truth spend forever dipping in and out of my book until something a bit exalted, mysterious, even prophetic comes out, having rejected countless boring sentences. But I’m afraid nothing can be done about that. Well maybe I could take photos which show the time they were taken which could prove when I ... no, that doesn’t really make any sense. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Well you don’t have to do that either, you can be full of mistrust if you want. I’m not going to go making demands of anyone on that front. 

So here we go. The book is ‘Demons’ by Dostoevsky. The line is ... 

“He’s in a fever, and he’s raving; something’s happened to him, very peculiar,” Stavrogin thought, looking at him once more. Both men walked on without stopping.