Dolores O'Riordan

“Luckily I don't have a sinful past, because there's nothing you can hide from your kids now.”

“The school I went to was so Gaelic that you learned how to play the tin whistle and how to Irish-dance in class.”

“When you're pregnant or living with an infant, there's a kind of sacredness around your body that affects everything you do.”

“We have a certain bond that we don't have with anyone else on the planet. You just have that bond, that journey when you are in a band together.”

“For me, you can't be a big fat pig up there, slovenly and singing croaky and whatnot. You have to work.”

“I lived in a small village outside the city and grew up in a large family, so my world was very much centred around that. I used to sing in the local church, and I would also occasionally sing in the local pubs for which I used to get a few bob. That, for me, was the start of my interest in music, which has obviously expanded since then.”

“Room service is nice. Ooh-la-la, a hotel. At home, it's laundry and school lunches.”

“U2 and Sinead O'Connor - I haven't a clue why we're compared to them. Apart from us all being Irish, we've nothing in common.”

“I was a full-time mom for seven years. You go back on tour, you're back in hotels, you're ordering room service, and you're getting an itinerary slipped under your door every,day. You're kind of thinking, 'Did I go home for seven years, or was that just a dream?'”

“Not everybody wanted a female to be the front face of a big band, you know... You had to be three times better than a man had to be.”

“When I was about 14, I got a tacky keyboard for 250 pounds and put on a drum machine and found I could write a song.”

“It was tough. We went right from being teenagers to musical superstars with money and fame and attention. All of us had a hard time adjusting to it, especially me.”

“People often ask me why I sing with a strong Irish accent. I suppose when I was five years old, I spoke with a strong Irish accent, so I sang with one, too.”

“I worked myself into a frenzy. By 1996, I had a nervous breakdown just from working. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, just getting anxiety attacks and all of that stuff because I was doing too much, too young, all the time.”

“I was so young when I got so famous, and then I kind of put up a wall around myself. I didn't really want to show people any fragilities or fears; I was trying to be this tough person that I felt was expected of me.”

“When you're on tour too much or on stage too much, you feel like you have to deliver and get this super-hyped vibe going.”

“Only we were in The Cranberries. Only we know what it was like being in that crazy whirlwind of fame. We have children and spouses and lives, but there is only one Cranberries.”

“We all wonder about death, where people go and what happens. But certainly, they cross over from this dimension to another one.”

“I got to a point where I referred to myself as Dolores of the Cranberries instead of myself because I alienated my real self from what I became so much.”

“In Canada, anything that's not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin.”