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Northern Ireland Quotes

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Northern Ireland Quotes

“Much of the Irish landscape is dominated by peat bogs; the anaerobic and acidic conditions in the densely packed earth mean that the past in Ireland can be subject to macabre resurrection. Peat cutters occasionally churn up ancient mandibles, clavicles, or entire cadavers that have been preserved for millennia. The bodies date as far back as the Bronze Age, and often show signs of ritual sacrifice and violent death. These victims, cast out of their communities and buried, have surfaced vividly intact, from their hair to their leathery skin. The poet Seamus Heaney, who harvested peat as a boy on his family’s farm, once described the bogs of Ireland as “a landscape that remembered everything that had happened in and to it.”

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Book:Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
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“ERIC: She looked like Gerry Adams without the beard. BRIDGET: Ok... ERIC: It is of course hard to imagine Gerry Adams without the beard. The Gerry Adams beard is part and parcel of the Gerry Adams persona. It symbolises his revolutionary ardour, his passion for constitutional change. And now as it whitens it cements his status as eminence grise, aging philosopher-king. But without the beard he'd look like she did to me that cold autumnal morning on Cyprus Avenue. Innocent. Irrelevant. Lost.”

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Book:Cyprus Avenue
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“GERRY: [towards his newborn granddaughter] Y'don't even know your own name. And a bet you've no idea who I am? Y'don't know anything, do ya? You're startin' with a completely new sheet, eh? You're one big blank page, that's what you are. But you're the next page, our kid... you're the next page. GERRY smiles at his grandchild as the lights fade to Blackout.”

Northern IrelandThe TroublesNorthern Irish TheatreGood Friday Agreement
Book:The History of the Troubles
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“The body is a fantastic machine,’ Hughes told Mackers in one of his Boston College interviews, recounting the grueling sequence of a hunger strike. ‘It’ll eat off all the fat tissue first, then it starts eating away at the muscle, to keep your brain alive.’ Long after Hughes and Price called an end to their strikes and attempted to reintegrate into society, the nursed old grudges and endlessly replayed their worst wartime abominations. In a sense, they never stopped devouring themselves.”

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Book:Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
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“I was filming a movie in London, and I drove through Ireland. It was quite beautiful, and the countryside was really remarkable. The contrast between the countryside and Ireland, and the murals there, with Northern Ireland still being a part of the United Kingdom, there's just a stark contrast in those two things. And I found that the art that came out of the conflict was really spectacular because it was about remembering either events or points of view for local neighborhoods, or the rallying cries of one side against the other.”

ArtStillsTwoBeautifulRememberFoundSidesUnitedViewsEventsCryConflictPoint Of ViewLondonLocalsKingdomsTwo ThingsRemarkableNeighborhoodContrastIrelandSpectacularCountrysideStarksUnited KingdomNorthern IrelandRallyingMuralRallying Cry
Author:Vince Vaughn
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“The secret of my success is my mother, who was from Dublin. All my relations are in Dublin or in the west, or as I found out, we went to Rostrevor in Northern Ireland to film and I got out, while they changed cars around, and this man said to me: "You know you have cousins in this town? And they're coming down to see you..." And so they did. I'm sorry we didn't go to a lot more places, so that I could find a lot more cousins. So, that was good. It's entirely because my father was also brought up in Dublin. So, that's my link.”

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Author:Judi Dench
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“History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.”

WellsImportantStatesPastUnderstandingRaceIssuesImpossibleTaughtHistoricalSouthNuclearBackgroundsWelfareOur TimeIrelandSouth AfricaDisarmamentWelfare StateImportant IssuesNorthern IrelandNuclear Disarmament
Author:Alan Bullock
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“For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where diversity is shared - where I share with you my difference - that can be valuable. But the simple fact that we are unlike each other is a terrifying notion. I have often found myself in foreign settings where I became suddenly aware that I was not like the people around me. That, to me, is not a pleasant discovery.”

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Author:Richard Rodriguez
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“The United Kingdom and the European Union will remain indispensable partners of the United States even as they begin negotiating their ongoing relationship to ensure continued stability, security and prosperity for Europe, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the world.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“I felt when I was elected that the most important task on this island [Ireland] was to extend the hand of friendship right across the board to the people of Northern Ireland, to have the beginnings of a real peace process. In consequence, although I have no role in intergovernmental talks or political discussions, that would be my very top priority.”

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Author:Mary Robinson
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“I know it feels like two steps forward and one step back, but we are making progress. In my lifetime, I have lived through one World War, I have lived through the end of Apartheid in South Africa, the pulling down of the Berlin Wall. I have experienced what I never thought I would have experienced, which is a pretty workable peace in Northern Ireland, and I experienced a unified Europe - until the Conservative government got its hands on the idea that in order to appease a few back-benchers they would hold a referendum, what a disastrous idea.”

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Author:Patrick Stewart
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