women-academics-from-ireland

"What could be more cynical than still seeking to exploit fossil fuel reserves when the scientific evidence is abundantly clear that we need to end all combustion of fossil fuels by 2050?""

"We have entered a new reality where fossil fuel companies have lost their legitimacy and social license to operate."

"The opening words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the landmark post-WWII text signed seventy years ago this month, still resonate today: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” But the contours of today’s world are changing – often literally, as climate change sees sea levels rise and coastlines erode, threatening small island states and low-lying communities. And it’s incumbent upon all of us to ensure that the people living in these areas, and those who migrate from their homes due to war, persecution and poverty are as “free and equal in dignity and rights” as those of us living in prosperity... The need for collective action to protect the vulnerable and defend their rights is urgent, as the threat from divisive populists shows no sign of receding. We all need to remember that refugees and migrants are not a “horde” threatening livelihoods and security... The Global Compact can actually strengthen sovereignty by giving back to countries the ability to manage migration – as opposed to the chaotic scenes we have witnessed in the Mediterranean in recent years, with so much wretched human misery and hardship..."

"As heads of state travel to Marrakesh in the coming days, I hope they will reflect on the powerful words spoken earlier this year by Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General: “Human beings have moved from place to place since the beginning of time, by choice and under duress, and will continue to do so. Refugees and migrants are not ‘others’. They are ‘us’. They are as diverse as the human family itself.” These are the values we all must uphold if we are to have any hope of effectively managing migration and protecting human rights. Inaction, cowardice or sabotage will leave the whole world poorer."

"It is a huge honour to take up the role as Chair of The Elders at such a critical moment for peace, justice and human rights worldwide. Building on the powerful legacies of Archbishop Tutu and Kofi Annan, I am confident that our group’s voice can both be heard by leaders and amplify grassroots activists fighting for their rights."

"The executives were given a dressing down by the former Irish premier Mary Robinson. She said: "We should all salute the courage the Holy Father has shown on climate change when too many secular leaders have spurned their responsibilities." Ms Robinson asked the oil bosses: "What could be more cynical than still seeking to exploit fossil fuel reserves when the scientific evidence is abundantly clear that we need to end all combustion of fossil fuels by 2050?" She said the energy transition would require a massive shift of capital to clean energy and warned: "If some industries fail to adjust to this new word, they will fail to exist.""

"She used a press briefing at UN headquarters.. to excoriate President Trump. She blamed, at least in part, what she characterized as President Trump’s “poor leadership” for... the increasing tendency... to put “country first in an isolationist, nationalistic way.” Ms. Robinson also complained about what she claimed was the “destabilizing” effect of President Trump’s tweets.... Ms. Robinson told reporters that the Elders had met with the autocratic presidents of China and Russia. However, the Elders had not requested any meeting with President Trump. “It’s difficult to see how constructive a conversation we could have with President Trump at the moment, given his clear views,” she said, referring particularly to the issues of climate change, the nuclear proliferation threat, multilateral trade, and the value of multilateralism... In June 2017, reacting to President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, Mary Robinson said it was “unconscionable that one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters would simply walk away from its responsibility to people both at home and abroad.” She accused the president of turning the United States into “a rogue state on the international stage.”... Ms. Robinson’s...on par with the most progressive proponents of the “Green New Deal.”...“We have entered a new reality where fossil fuel companies have lost their legitimacy and social license to operate,” she declared. No more exploration by fossil fuel companies for new reserves, she demanded."

"This year, we are awarding the Kew International Medal to Mary Robinson, a long-standing champion of climate justice and founder of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. Mary’s work demonstrates how dependent humanity is on the ecosystems that surround us, and the impact of the increased threat to their existence. Like Kew, she is committed to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals on biodiversity, agriculture and food security. She believes in supporting the next generation of scientists and climate activists and is working alongside them to demand that we make better use of our planet’s most precious resources."

"I write about women's lives, their struggles, their friendships, their successes, their reflections, partially out of resistance to being immersed in this Irish-Catholic culture for so long. But in recent years we have the wonderful Mary Robinson, we have divorce laws, which aren't perfect but are making some changes. We have a much more active lesbian population in Ireland and so the Irish construction of women is changing in some very positive ways."

"The Elders announced today that their new Chair will be Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Mary Robinson becomes The Elders’ third Chair since the group was founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, following Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2007-13) and Kofi Annan (2013-2018). Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General, and Graça Machel, former Education Minister of Mozambique and co-founder of The Elders, will serve as joint Deputy Chairs, succeeding Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, who has held the role since 2013."

"Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Emeritus Elder and former Chair, said: “I am delighted that Mary Robinson is the new Chair of The Elders. I have witnessed her commitment to rights and justice in Palestine, Côte d’Ivoire, India and so many other parts of the world. Mary always puts ordinary people at the heart of The Elders’ mission, and I know she will fight for their rights with the same vigour as our dearly missed brother Kofi.”"

"Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and new Deputy Chair of The Elders, said: “It is a pleasure and a privilege to become Deputy Chair of The Elders alongside Graça Machel. I look forward to working with my fellow Elders under Mary Robinson’s leadership to defend human rights, address the challenge of climate change and promote equality.”"

"I never write about simple, gentle things, and I never will. It's not being sensational. I hate sensational books. Unless we look at dark and covered painful wounds, we can never heal them. (1995)"

"[A novel] has a right and a duty to ask very painful and difficult questions. It doesn't solve them, but it asks them. (1995)"

"I don't think I have ever learned the game of men and women. To this day I regret the fact that it's like a dance I couldn't learn."

"Writing of any experience, male or female, is difficult. One has to keep one's eyes and ears open and then delve into the imagination."

"To make a story both more alive and more suspenseful one has to think of altering the point of view of each chapter. In doing that one changes styles because each person thinks differently. I find it stimulating though a little daunting, but as reader and writer I am not interested in anything less."

"(Do think of your work as political?) O'BRIEN: Well, everything is political: one's upbringing, the culture in which one grows up, even religion is political, whether we like it or not. Religion is supposed to be spiritual but we all know it isn't."

"(Do you have to cultivate a distance between you and your friends to have space to write?) O'BRIEN: Yes. One must live the inner life to the utmost. Samuel Beckett wrote a preface to a book of Jack Yeats's paintings, and he said: "the artist who stakes his being comes from nowhere. And he has no brothers." Well, of course, he does come from somewhere and that somewhere informs and permeates the work as it did for Samuel Beckett and it did for Jack Yeats, but solitary is how an artist has to be. It's crucial to the work. And painful for the life!"

"County Clare inhabits my thoughts and my writing wherever I happen to be. Ireland is always speaking a story and I have to search for it. (Is it always familiar territory?) O'BRIEN: Yes and no. With each book I hope to dig deeper. That is all I ask."

"There's nothing like obstacle to make a writer"

"When we're young, we leave home and we think we're leaving behind us our roots. And we do leave them behind for a time. And then they catch up with us, and they twine themselves around us and that's a great thing."

"one of the things about writing is that each book is a beginning. Each book is another hurdle up the ladder or up the mountain of one's country and one's own sensibility."

"What literature does, if it's any good, is to open the soul, the mind, the psyche and the body of a reader. I'm always looking for that - and in some cases getting into trouble for even attempting it."

"A lot of young writers send me books and they want to be published, 'to be famous, to be known'. That isn't the job. That comes later, if it comes at all. A writer has to love that vocation - and it is an extremely unbefriended and difficult vocation."

"I believe in Kafka's maxim that literature, whether it be poetry or prose, is disturbing. It's many other things as well- it can be exciting; it can be an ecstasy; it can be, to use a modern word, it can be a trip. But the inner core of human existence is about disturbance and writing comes from conflict."

"I suppose the themes we choose - because there are many stories I could have chosen to write about, but I chose this one - are as much about us, the writer, as about the story. You have to live a story. You have to take it in and stay with it and hopefully bring it back out"

"What has happened (it's funny, but it's also very serious) is that language is used now to cover up language is used as a deception, in every country, in every area, whereas great language and the imperative of great language is truth."

"Forests have always been used in stories down the centuries. The forest is life - there's beauty, there's danger, there's threats, and, at the same time, potential safety. So without wanting to sound too pompous, I suppose a forest is a metaphor."

"A work of art has a big space. If for a moment we think of something else - and I won't dodge the question of Picasso's 'Guernica', or Pieter Bruegel's 'Hunters' - they're huge canvasses in which everything is allowed. Everything is painted in, everything is depicted, so that the viewer enters the whole world of that story or that tragedy, or that war or that hunt. It is quite different — and must be — to reportage."

"I waked quickly and sat up in bed abruptly. It is only when I am anxious that I awaken easily, and for a minute I could not remember what it was. Then I remembered, the old reason: he had not come home, my father."

"She has always ridden the passions as if they were a magnificent horse."

"Certainly I admire Edna O'Brien's work greatly. It would be difficult for any Irish woman writer to ignore the impact of her work during the repressive Ireland of the 1960s."

"(Tell us about your favorite short story.) “Old Wounds,” by Edna O’Brien, haunts me as though I’ve lived it."

"Edna O'Brien transforms the lives of Irish women into a liturgy of premonition, doom, and enigmatic redemption...For all O’Brien’s sacramental melancholy, she exudes a worldly passion for the moment. She seduces readers with her direct, piercing gaze and pleases with the rhythms of her storytelling diction. Most of these tales are set in a territory between human brutality and inexplicable salvation. O’Brien takes it all in—the small-mindedness, gossip, superstition, death of the spirit, and destruction of the body. Her characters dance on the edge of the grave, yet, perhaps because despair is for Catholics the only unpardonable sin, O’Brien often tosses them a mysterious line of absolution and hope."

"...her perspective is women centered but not feminist: her works usually depict the traps of femininity rather than liberation."

"Literature and spirituality are very close. It doesn't matter if there's erotica in the book, or if there is very vivid description, or if there's hatred in the book. I think God and the gods watch over the writer or poet who for the duration of the writing is kind of blessed, is in a spell - not in a happy spell and not in a sweet or calm one, but to stir up that part of the mind, to find knowledge and words and narrative that one did not know one had, is a mystery. And having been brought up very religiously, I ascribe that mystery to God. The Greeks ascribed it to 'the gods'. But whether it's singular or plural, it is an energy, a force outside oneself, that comes to cause this stuff."

"We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable."

"The vote, I thought, means nothing to women, we should be armed."

"Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more."

"All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people."

"[On the banning of (her then) four novels in Ireland] I believe that mental disturbance by literature is a healthy and invigorating thing. We have plenty of comfortable and easy prose all around us, but it's by abrasion that people's prejudices are aroused."

"It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence."

"Never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty."

"She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give."

"That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open."

"It is not that you have to be happy-that would be asking too much-but if it gets too painful that sense of wonderment, or joy, dies, and with it the generosity so necessary to create. (1984)"

"Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul. (Vogue, April 1985)"