I don't mind being a symbol but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings and I've seen what the pigeons do to them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
This monument is going to be built as a symbol.
I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.
As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.
You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.
When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy.
Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so.
There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private.
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
I certainly would absolutely never do what some of my American colleagues do and object to religious symbols being used, putting crosses up in the public square and things like that. I don't fret about that at all; I'm quite happy about that.
As a memorial, I'd like a statue. Not of me, but a little modern statue, in marble or bronze, maybe of a bird, in a park where children could play and people going by could see it. On it, I'd just like it to say: 'Maeve Binchy, storyteller' and people could look at the name and remember that they'd seen it somewhere else.