Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My favorite way of working is if somebody gives me a piece of music, because I'm quite limited as a player, so it's my favorite thing if somebody gives me a piece of music, and then I can write lyrics and melodies.
All of my life, actually, I had a real strong relationship with God, but I was always in the closet about it. The only distance out of the closet I really want to come there is having my tattoo or wearing my t-shirt.
Easy to keep faith. God is good. Only one mistake he made. Free will, therefore can't intervene unless we ask, but gospels show, when we ask we must believe we will be answered. Then all manner of things will be well.
I h a v e a l l t h a t I r e q u e s t e d and I do not want what I haven`t got. I have learned this from my mother ; see how happy she has made me. I will take this road much further though I know not where it takes me.
It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren't making music because they want to change the world; they're making music because they want to just make a ton of money.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm now in the business of making spiritual records and using my voice for that purpose. I'm not going to be singing songs that I made in the past. I closed the door on that incarnation of Sinead O'Connor.
I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.
I have also Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I wouldn't have survived that if not for music. So I think for me, music was a soothing thing and it was also a place where you could say all the stuff that you couldn't say anywhere else.
There's a standard of songwriting that, when you start immersing yourself in those types of songs, it raises your own bar as a songwriter. There's also simplicity in the songwriting. It's much harder to be simple than it is to be complicated.
Unfortunately in my case, because of what I do for living, here in Ireland is very hard for me to find a doctor who can just deal with me as a person, that can get beyond Sinead O'Connor. I had to go to England to find a psychiatrist for my case.
When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.
I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know?
Until everyone in this country over 35 has passed away, the theocracy will still be alive. And I am not actually of the theocracy, and that could bother people. I think I've probably taken a bit of flak for that, as well as being an arsehole occasionally, obviously.
I was getting a lot of pressure from people in show business about my being overweight because of medication, I was on 200 mg of amitriptiline. When I said this to my doctor, for some reason she took me completely off medication and she didn't really supervise properly.
I think "God" is an off-putting word. I don't think there's a name for this. I think it's a presence that is best for us, but unfortunately, it can't intervene if we don't ask it, and religion has us talking to the wall because the god that religion is selling isn't the reality.
When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy...I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences.
You have to hide what you are and it's really stressful and very bad for your self esteem. Because it's not obvious to people that you are ill, they treat you as if you're a pain in the ass, then you beat yourself up and you are already beating yourself up as a part of mental illness.
I suppose the biggest change to me is this kind of very oversexualizing of everything. Not that anyone wants to take the sex out of rock 'n' roll, you know - that would be ludicrous - but it seems that everything now, it's like the sexuality is the only voice; everything else is gone.
Forgiveness is the most important thing. We all have to forgive what was done to us - the Irish people have to forgive. The African people. The Jewish people. We all have to forgive and understand the only way to stop the cycle of hate and abuse is not to allow yourself to get caught in it.
What I'm interested in is the protection of children from violence, and they are exposed to violence every single day in the form of, as it's called, the news. Then you wonder why the children are running around, doing the things in the streets, doing the things that they've seen the adults doing in the so-called news.
I have always had a good functioning in my artistic life, but I had problems mostly in my private life, I got very angry with my boyfriends and stuff...I would probably have good reasons to be angry but the volume would be too high, just getting to some level of wounding that perhaps was not appropriate to the actual offence committed.
We can love religion as we need rituals, but The Holy Spirit is a bird, free to fly and land where it likes. We don't actually need 'religion' in order to have a relationship with The Holy Spirit. Too many wars an violence over religion.We need to see it's all the same spirit and we are part of that spirit so we shouldn't be fighting over what name we call it. It's a free bird.
When you have mental illness you don't have a plaster or a cast or a crutch, that let everyone know that you have the illness, so people expect the same of you as from anyone else and when you are different they give you a hard time and they think you're being difficult or they think you're being a pain in the ass and they're horrible to you. You spend your life in Ireland trying to hide that you have a mental illness.
I suppose in some ways, all over the world "crazy" is a term of abuse and I think that is something that should be stopped. In Ireland "crazy" is a term of abuse and people are terrified of anything that they conceive to be crazy. And the people believed to be crazy won't be treated compassionately, they will treat you horribly and use it as a reason to dismiss anything you would think, do, say or feel, so you're rocking into a self esteem trap.
I find that as a female boss in the music industry, it's difficult to actually be treated as if you actually are the boss and to have people act on your instructions and take you seriously. Like you call up people who are working for you and say, "I'd like to see such-and-such document," and they tell you that you don't need it. Then you have to spend time convincing them that it doesn't matter whether they think you need it or not, they're supposed to hand it to you.
We're exposing our minors to abuse by the fact that they leave the radio on in the car and let them listen to the news on the way to school. Or the fact that it's shown on the news, the children can see Gaddafi's face and his glorious Technicolor clothes getting shot off on the news or on the newspaper shelves. In the shelves of the shops where all the sex magazines are consciously put at the top, if they're consciously put at the top, that must mean the violence is all put at the bottom consciously.
You also said in Rolling Stone that your look is based on mine. The look I chose, I chose on purpose at a time when my record company were encouraging me to do what you have done. I felt I would rather be judged on my talent and not my looks. I am happy that I made that choice, not least because I do not find myself on the proverbial rag heap now that I am almost 47 yrs of age.. which unfortunately many female artists who have based their image around their sexuality, end up on when they reach middle age.