Sinead O'Connor Quotations

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 don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.

To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.

My creative process is quite slow. I hear melodies in my head while I'm washing the dishes and I allow my subconscious to do the work.

If you were the boss of a company and some of the employees of your company were known to sexually abuse children, you would fire them instantly.

I don't feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I'm an old lady, I'm going to have it.

People who express suicidal feelings are least likely to act on them.

People always complain, 'you never invited me to your wedding', but I prefer casual weddings.

I have no shame around the fact that I can be shot into suicidal feelings by certain people's treatment of me. I am no different to any other person, I therefore act as I believe any other person should be free to.

When you live with the Devil you learn there's a God very quickly.

Suicide doesn't solve your problems. It only makes them infinitely, un-countably worse.

My story is the story of countless millions of children whose families and nations were torn apart for money in the name of Jesus Christ.

I seek no longer to be a 'famous' person, and instead I wish to live a 'normal' life.

When I sing, it's the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It's not about notes or scales, it's all about emotion.

Fame is a curse... it was the worst phase of my life, which I thank God I'll never have to go through again.

I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

I've been married before, but I've never had my dream wedding in Vegas. I wanted to do it there because it's casual, quick, not religious and, most of all, very romantic.

As long as the house of The Holy Spirit remains a haven for criminals the reputation of the church will remain in ruins.

I think there's a difference between God and religion.

I could stand in the street and sing and get enough to pay the bills. I don't need millions of dollars.

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've been married three times, really I should only have been married once.

There's nothing in the recent past I want to write about.

I don't want any man to have control over me.

I only feel better because people aren't being so abusive to me about my weight.

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.

It's been seven hours and fifteen days, since you took your love away.

Minors should not be exposed to what is going on in the so-called news.

Every pore of you is crying and you don't even understand why or what. I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds and having a chance to, you know, build a life.

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.

Remember what I told you. If they hated me, they will hate you.

God's place is the world but the world is not God's place......

If there was acceptance of the mentally ill in the Catholic Church, the entire Curia would resign!

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.

I had developed manic depression [bipolar disorder] ... and the main symptoms the constant voice in the head telling you to kill yourself.

I am catholic. And I don't like to see catholicism being brought into disrepute by those in charge who don't seem to believe in God at all... they act like they don't think God is watching.

Look at all our old men in pubs. Look at all our young people on drugs.

What I like about being a musician is that I find the thing soothing, but I also give the soothing to other people;

I think people who come from abuse and/or people who have mental illnesses, have terrible self-esteem problems.

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 feel that I was a useful contributor to society, and that I couldn't be a contributor to society in any other way.

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.

The important thing about "brave" is, it doesn't mean you're not terrified.

I think people think they're not brave if they're frightened, and that's not true at all.

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.

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.

Protection of children from violence and abuse has always been my main activity or campaign.

They're my positive chaos, my children.

As a parent, I don't really want my child to know about all this horrible violence that people seem to be wanting to tell them every time they go to buy some candy.

Generally I don't listen to sad songs if I'm sad. I listen to happy songs.

I guess there's a song for absolutely everything that could possibly happen to a person.

It should be a crime to abandon your child, and it's not. It would be wonderful if it could be criminalized.

I think in the first place hearing the music inside of you is very soothing, very comforting. For me there always been, if you like, a spiritual connection between myself and music.

I grew up in a situation of extreme abuse, but there was no chance to talk about it, so music became the escape if you like.

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.

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.

I don't agree with this romantic fantasy that people who suffer from depression are more likely to be artists. I find that I am more creative when I am happy actually.

There's a weighing kind of overemphasis on sexuality, which disempowers music generally, because it silences all the other voices; it makes music a very powerless force for changing the world.

I'm a great cleaner. I'm actually kind of addicted to cleaning. I could clean anything.

It's very hard to be perceived as a boss, and behaving like a boss or wanting to be treated like one.

I am someone who really does believe very strongly in the Holy Spirit. I feel I'm someone who, since I was a very, very small child, of being engaged in a very strong relationship with the Holy Spirit.

I'm a very good dishwasher. I'm a terrible cook. I'm an awful cook.

If you really ever love someone, that doesn't go away, although you wish it would.

What I hope is to really focus on being a songwriter. I'd love to write songs for other people; that's something I'd really like to start doing.

The sexuality is being sold to the artists as power when in fact it's not; it's a way of hypnotizing their audience.

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.

You can't solve a spiritual problem with politics. You may as well as throw the Parliament to a drowning man.

The trouble when you have a job like mine is it's your social life as well, so I need to actually [find] something to do in my downtime when my kids are at school.

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.

I'm great at washing dishes and I'm great at cleaning the house and all that kind of stuff. I don't like doing it, but I'm...

God needs to get rescued from religious music.

I really believe that God and religion is two different things.

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.

This is how you know religion is failing because people think you're bonkers if you believe in God and also because it's so uncool believing in Jesus and everything.

I'm a Holy Spirit maniac, yeah. When I say maniac, to me, a maniac is a person that goes around telling you what you should believe. You know, you have to believe what I believe, and I don't believe that.

I guess I'm a Holy Spirit maniac. I'm not a religious maniac. I love religion, but I don't like it.

In my belief, there's one spirit. I prefer to call it the Holy Spirit. I don't think it matters if you call it God or Allah or Jesus or Fred or David or too early in the morning or whatever.

There's a difference between, you know, God loves unconditionally in my feeling and religion loves conditionally. Religion spends an awful lot of time dictating who God can love and can't love.

I think there's a lot that's beautiful about religion and very inspiring, obviously, but I do think that God needs to be rescued from religion actually.

I love the Holy Spirit. I can't stand to see it being disrespected. It's been there for me at times when I really needed it. Therefore, I have a duty to stand for it is how I feel.

Irish artists have a tradition of being very heavily engaged in what is happening in their own society. So it was important that they had a voice.

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.

I don't want to go shoving what I believe down anyone's throat. Whatever I believe about Jesus is a personal thing, but it doesn't exclude all the others.

The irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually.

I always feel there is a link between music and spirituality.

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.

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.

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.

What pisses me off is when I've got seven or eight record company fat pig men sitting there telling me what to wear.

That's my feeling - that real God and religion are two different things and that religion is trying to obscure what God really is.

I think a lot of artists go waving their Grammies around thanking God for their Grammy, but when it comes to a pitch battle in the street for the honor of God, none of them is anywhere to be found.

People often talk about me as a singer, but they don't often talk about you when you're a woman as a songwriter.

You can't have a church run by people who don't believe in God.

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.

I suppose the danger when you have a job that involves writing is you can be a bit isolated.

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.

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's so hard to retain what your purpose is - or to even realize what it is.

I know that I have done many things to give you reason not to listen to me

Nobody gets between me and my microphone.