Arthur Schmerge

“That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in sudden specks and splinters, perhaps it was only there so that my brother could pass through it with his tomtit’s thread, was embroidered on nothing, like this thread of ink which I have let run on for page after page, swarming with cancellations, corrections, doodles, blots and gaps, bursting at times into clear big berries, coagulating at others into piles of tiny starry seeds, then twisting away, forking off, surrounding buds of phrases with frameworks of leaves and clouds, then interweaving again, and so running on and on and on until it splutters and bursts into a last senseless cluster of words, ideas, dreams, and so ends.”
― Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

“Wish me good luck, please,” I whisper.
“On one condition,” Philemone says. “Remember, what you call luck is the meeting of opportunity and flexibility.”
I smile, weakly.
“Good luck,” she says. “Now go.”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered while adhering to one path, he cannot be persuaded that it would be well for him to forsake it. And so when occasion requires the cautious man to act impetuously, he cannot do so and is undone: whereas had he changed his nature with time and circumstances, his fortune would have been unchanged.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“He seems perfect for us. One room on Eight Mile? Quite a fall. Probably needs fast money. We can use that to our advantage and accommodate him.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal of Faith