Robin Brown > Robin's Quotes

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#1

“In the grand scope of things, glitter may not seem like much. But in a way, it’s everything: an offering, evidence of all our striving to shine, shrapnel of the sun itself. What we create from these scraps is how we heal the world, how we so love the world and restore its wholeness. Hand-in-hand in this snaking parade, a human community of broken shards upon a sphere, spinning.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: community, disco-ball, forgiveness, glitter, healing, love, magnolia-pearl, offering, shine, wholeness

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#2

“. . . fabric was my first consistent contact. . . my first language, my mother tongue—tactile, animate, and entire.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: clothing, fabric, fashion, language, mother-tongue, tactile, textiles, texture

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#3

“Creativity isn’t something we choose—it’s how we’re made, and how we survive.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, choice, creativity, fashion, forgiveness, keep-going, love, magnolia-pearl, survival, trauma

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#4

“Maybe at the end of our lives we get a Ferris-Wheel vantage of the whole tapestry, the quilt laid flat, answering for its complexity. At the beginning we’re handed frayed and stained flowery bed sheets, a scrap of polka-dots, a snatch of strawberry print. Tattered as they are, there’s some sustaining sweetness in there.

The oldest pioneer quilts conceal bits of paper batting between their threadbare layers: postcards, recipes, clipped snippets of newspaper poetry. Every spare material had a part to play, fragments of experience and feeling arranged in a repeating pattern, little sewn sound bytes spinning ordered fractals.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: complexity, creativity, ferris-wheel, pioneer, quilt, scraps, sustaining, sweetness, tapestry

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#5

“You’re here, which means somebody loves you, which means you deserve to be loved.

The things God creates aren’t junk.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, creativity, deserve, forgiveness, god, junk, love, magnolia-pearl, unconditional

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#6

“I embroider these tales with charm and magic because that’s how I experienced them. The trickster is a threshold being, between two realms. One foot planted here, the other beyond.

The letter and the spirit.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: charm, embroidery, experience, letter, magic, memory, realm, spirit, trickster

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#7

“For all my eyes couldn't see, my heart could perceive. The organ that forms first, that speaks loudest. Bulging straight from our chests bright as maraschino cherries, and brave as anything.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, bravery, cherries, courage, creativity, forgiveness, heart, love, perception, speak

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#8

“So many sunrises and sunsets have to happen to achieve a certain hue or perspective that didn’t exist before. That we can hold in our hands or wear upon our breast as evidence of our own weathering, talismans of our survival.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, clothing, evidence, fading, hue, perspective, sunrise, sunset, survival, weathering

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#9

“It’s the mercy in our making that allows for these kinds of memories to win over the dark ones. Though they might haunt us and serve to protect us from harm, bad memories will always be lessened by those of light. Our survival depends on these rays of built-in grace, the thriving that urges us to hope.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: dark, forgiveness, grace, hope, light, memories, memory, mercy, protection, survival

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#10

“Sometimes an escape is also a return.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: discovery, escape, explore, forgiveness, nature, return, seeking, self, truth, wander

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#11

“There’s not really any bad news in nature. What we call catastrophe, to nature, is just neutral. Preston always said that if you can’t find the space to get to love, even towards yourself, at least be neutral. Everything else’ll just make you sick, and turn you into that thing you don’t understand or don’t wanna be.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: bad-news, catastrophe, forgiveness, love, nature, neutral, peace, self-love

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#12

“Nature and her animals bear witness to us, and we bear witness to each other, and this is how we transmit the trauma out of us… stitch by stitch to show God we’re still here, we’re paying attention, we can’t do it without their higher power, and without each other. A plea and a push, our participation. It’s all necessary.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: animals, attention, bear-witness, god, healing, nature, participation, prayer, stitch, trauma

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#13

“If the birds keep on making nests, if they know there’s gonna be a tomorrow, then I wanna stick around and see what they’re singing about. They’re who I’m gonna listen to. . .”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: bad-news, birds, despair, future, hope, nature, nests, peace, singing, tomorrow

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#14

“Maybe it was mild mania, a little storm in sequins. The line winds when it comes to creativity and mental illness. But a flatline is always exactly what it is. Sometimes you have to embrace a little madness in art, and my mom was fully committed.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, creativity, flatline, glitter, madness, mania, mental-illness, sequins

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#15

“What my parents didn’t transform they sold “as is”: those two little words that carry so many scars, and heart.

The phrase itself felt like me, like our life. It felt like enough.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: as-is, enough, flaws, heart, love, scars, thrift-store, transformation, used, vintage

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#16

“. . . true belonging. Which isn’t a place, but a practice.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: belonging, forgiveness, heart, home, love, place, practice, true, truths

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#17

“New normals just kept resurfacing our lives, like a rearranged shore, wave after wave after wave.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: beach, family, love, normal, ocean, resurface, sea, waves

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#18

“The pacts of children are holy little husks, the most well-intentioned things in the universe. Sealed with spit, whispered for safety, they’re the things we’re most afraid to speak, and the covenants that keep this great world spinning.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: angels, children, forgiveness, holy, love, pacts, prayer, protection, safety, universe

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#19

“When you’re in the middle of chaos, it’s hard to see what is being built. Sometimes the evidence is all we have. I learned to allow whatever marks the world made to speak their space, and I drew around them what I could.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: building, chaos, clothing, fashion, keep-going, paint, persistence, space, speech, stains

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#20

“Creativity promises you a mess; making meaning of that mess is the whole world. Sometimes it’s all chaos, a collection of stains. Art is just an offering to the process.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, chaos, creativity, love, meaning, mess, offering, process

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#21

“She had to get to the essence of the thing—to feel with her hands the undoing, and watch with her own eyes the reconnection.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, clothing, creation, creativity, essence, fashion, patching, reconnection, recycling, undoing

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#22

“Revolutions begin with what is most intimate, with the things that lay against our skin. Clothing-creators world and time over have taken the greatest risks expressing themselves through what is hidden—reimagining movement, finding breath.
The alterations reverberate through each successive layer.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: alterations, breath, clothing, expression, fashion, layers, movement, revolution, risk

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#23

“Maybe you don’t have shit besides a skateboard and a Supertramp record, but if you have one true friend you have everything. . .”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: friend, friends, friendship, gratitude, records, skateboard, skateboarding, supertramp

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#24

“In embroidery, there’s just as much undoing as there is doing—plucking and pulling your thread back through the holes you pierced to see where you might have gone off-course, and where you might begin again. Our ancestors once believed the stars themselves were a result of this kind of occurrence, pinpricks of light poked in the fabric of night. The Creator doesn’t make mistakes, but sometimes it’s so damn hard to see the reason.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: ancestors, constellations, creativity, creator, embroidery, god, reason, stars, thread, undoing

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#25

“Embroidery is beautiful not only for what you see, but for all you don’t. From the back, it’s a messy map—absolute chaos, all switchbacks and starts. Knots upon knots, pulled with teeth and pricked fingers. Each one a prayer, on a string.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: chaos, creativity, creator, embroidery, god, knots, prayer, string, thread

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#26

“Two steps forward and one step back is still progress, binding us to stronger stuff. People can tell you all day long that you’re strong. What’s more helpful to hear is, use your strength.

That’s the step forward, stabilized.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: backwards, belief, binding, forward, progress, self, strength, strong

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#27

“Mom wasn’t gonna sugarcoat anything, not ever. But she also wasn’t going to let it pass by. Nothing in her life, it seemed, was salvageable. But everything was material.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, creation, creativity, creator, material, salvaging, sugarcoat

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#28

“They were her recognition and her offering—a bit of matter, coated in glitter, and placed before a saint.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: art, creation, creator, glitter, matter, offering, recognition, saint

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#29

“They say your heart breaks to let the light in, but at some point some of our hearts break so hard and so often that they’re just filled with light, which has no choice but to shine back out. Maybe saints realize that before the rest of us do, which is why they’re always pointing to their hearts. They ask us not to harden against, but open to. They speak in tongues of trinkets, flowers and beads and glitter, small innocent things that insist throughout even the darkest times—bits of bright that are the philosophers’ stone. Strung up and clung to, shapeshifting the world itself.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: darkness, flowers, glitter, heart, heartbreak, light, love, saints, shapeshifting, signs-and-symbols

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#30

“At the end of the day, it’s a big circus, a great parade. We’re all in it together, bare-assed in clown suits.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

tags: circus, clothing, clowns, glitter, laughter, naked, parade, together, unity

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