You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman.
In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted.
I tell myself every day I love my Jacuzzi, I love my marble floors, I love my high ceilings.
When I was a child, I loved 'The Marble Faun' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The reason I liked it was because it had a beautiful binding. When you're a kid, you like books because they're pretty to look at, and this one had a white calfskin cover and gold edges. That was enough to make me love it.
'Wayne of Gotham' is very much a father-and-son exploration. We've always seen Thomas Wayne through the years as this figure carved in marble; this perfect man. The only thing we really know about is that he died in that alley outside of a theater. But every son has to confront the reality of his father at some point in his life.
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.
For me, life is not about gold taps and marble all over the place.
I've tried not to treat Shakespeare as a marble giant.
I used to joke that, since breastfeeding, my boobs looked like an old athletic sock with some loose change at the bottom, so when I felt a lump the size of a marble, I knew something was terribly wrong.
The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
I love the way the Victorians found a way to put faces in everything: you know, furniture and marble and, you know, everywhere you turn around - the banister, you know, there's someone looking at you.
