Maria Doyle Kennedy

“There's always been trying at some stage to design people. And it will always be presented initially as a positive thing, as a way to weed out diseases. Of course you know it ultimately will be used in a bad way too, to create slaves or servants.”

“I was inspired by my son on the song 'The Most Beautiful People Are Broken.' Life is an extra challenge for him. But he does it all with such great grace and courage.”

“Singing is the thing apart from my family that gives me the most joy in the world. I don't ever spend a day without singing.”

“In real life, I don't think anybody is all one shade. People who are perceived to be really good have bad thoughts and inclinations that they sometimes act on, I'm sure, and people have different sides to themselves.”

“Nobody in my family plays music professionally, but I definitely grew up around the culture of when my parents got together, as well as a lot of eating and drinking going on, they would also sing - they sat around in a circle, and everyone had a party piece.”

“Acting is something that I really love when I am doing it, as it is interesting and fun to pretend to be someone else, but I don't ever miss it when I am not doing it.”

“I like singing practically more than anything else, and I want to be the best, but I don't want to sacrifice time with my children.”

“The best thing anybody ever told me about acting - and I think it's probably true for life, generally - is listen. You've really got to watch, and you've really got to listen. Not see and hear.”

“Women are often expected to be more amiable or more pleasing or more submissive than men generally.”

“I think everybody likes to play the villain. They're always much more interesting characters.”

“My children have very little interest in my work. The most important question they have for me is, 'What's for tea?'”

“I always loved music and would listen to the radio and watch out for new stuff. When I was about nine or ten, I would go around to me friend's house on a Sunday when the top twenty was broadcast on the radio at 6 P.M., and we would tape it on a cassette, and then we would take turns in sharing it over the next week.”

“I didn't go to drama school or anything, and I learned on the job. And it's nice to have the chance to pretend to be other people. As a singer, though, I feel there's much more of me in that. I've written the songs, I'm singing them, I'm exposing my feelings.”

“Music just makes sense to me. I don't ever worry when I'm singing. It's the safest place. I am a bit of worrier.”

“Sometimes, when you are not feeling really good is when you tend to write songs because you are internalising everything, and you are examining your thought process, and you are quieter and quite still, so it is when you write things down.”

“Nobody can raise your kids like you can yourself.”