Marc P. Robinson

When it comes to the story of my heart, I am the villain, locking it away; denying its right be free. The chains are tight, restricting its growth; long enough to see through the window of opportunity, but the only escape it has, is via the pen. Why do I deny myself the opportunities? I know it comes from a place of protection, but also of fear. I think my heart has grown a resentment because of this betrayal, and has decided, enough is enough.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

Always seeking acceptance from others, searching for belonging. Striving for individuality, yet wanting to fit in. Never understanding that acceptance for one’s own individuality make all of that redundant.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

With all the doubt, with every worry, with all the negativity that I mistook for honesty, it kept me blinded. Lying for so long, I fooled myself in believing it to be my reality. And living in that world, it was my reality. Like when the lights come on, or when the curtains are drawn back, the shock of the clarity, meant I had to adjust to the new world I was witnessing. An honest; good with the bad, world, that I can thrive and grow in.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.