Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Dolores O'Riordan
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish musician Dolores O'Riordan.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
You never find peace in this realm, but it's okay, because when my dad went to the other side, he looks after me now better than he did in life. He is with me all the time.
When you're pregnant or living with an infant, there's a kind of sacredness around your body that affects everything you do.
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.
I guess the way to keep a grip on reality is just to take breaks in between albums like most normal bands do. Go home and be a person and hang out with your friends. Do separate things and get back to earth and write songs and go out there again.
When everybody's looking at you, it does your head in. When you're always on the inside, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.
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 missed a lot of family weddings and funerals because we were out on the road and had these big gigs, and you can't pull out of these gigs at the last minute because too many people are counting on it. It got to the point where I was consumed with that.
I've come to the conclusion that life is for the taking and just too short to dwell on the negative.
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.
When The Cranberries got really big in Ireland, it became difficult for me to be there with all the photographers and paparazzi.
We all got older, and we'd tell our children things like, 'Mommy used to be in a famous rock band,' but they didn't believe us. Part of the reason for our reunion was to show our children what we did to make the lives they have possible.
Growing up, there was a lot of pressure for women to be good-looking, but my mum was very strict, and she didn't allow me to wear make-up. Looking back, it was good for me. It slowed me down from becoming an adult too quickly.
I love performing, and I love the idea of people buying records. I don't particularly like the idea of people knowing me or thinking they do, but that's a part of what I choose. I choose not to go to college; I choose to be a singer.
When the Greatest Hits came out and we did that tour, I just felt I wanted to take a break, totally. Probably because, as well, I was so young when I got famous. I did album, tour, album, tour, album, tour, then I had a public nervous breakdown where I just lost tons of weight.
Room service is nice. Ooh-la-la, a hotel. At home, it's laundry and school lunches.
Why can't we actually sing and get respected as good singers and songwriters without having our boobs and butt hanging out?
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.
A lot of these songs just came from day-to-day experiences. And it was a very natural, kind of organic process.
It was different to what everyone else was doing. It was very hard to pigeonhole The Cranberries. And we were just huge; it was just sensational.
You get older and come to the conclusion that it's a great gig making music. Even if you turn into an old gnarly fart, no one cares what you look like if you write good songs - the only gig is to sing well and perform.
'Linger' was the first song I wrote after joining the Cranberries. I was 18, and the youngest member of the band was 16 at the time. We never imagined it'd be such a big hit.
I hated singing, I hated being on stage; I hated being in the Cranberries. I was constantly crying. I was going insane. I wanted to be a shopkeeper, a hairdresser, anything. I was so desperate to have a reality, friends, a regular, boring life. I missed that.
I didn't get a lot of attention from my dad when I was young. That's a big part of it for girls. Because your dad is the first love of your life. If he doesn't put you on his lap and give you a pet, you do end up not really liking yourself that much.
Sometimes your kids give you that shove out the door to do things that you need. Teenagers are good that way; they keep you in the loop.
I try to think about optimism. I try to look at the beautiful things in life.
I always come across like I'm looking serious, but I just don't like smiling. Honestly, obviously I'm different in person.
The writing became a hobby in the background: it took a back seat to parenthood and being a person and being a human being.
In Canada, anything that's not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin.
I'm an artist, and I need to work, like everybody. We need to be challenged and that we're getting up and doing something with our lives.
For a while there, our writing got really edgy... I've always written about experiences, so when your life gets a bit crazy, you start to write songs that are a bit edgy.
My priorities were taking the kids to school and being a mum and being a daughter and being a sister. Just spending a lot of that time with my family that I'd probably lost a lot of, touring with the Cranberries.
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.
I didn't know initially whether I'd like doing TV and whether I'd be able to work with other people. I've always done my own thing. I've never put myself into that situation, but it's the most fun I've had in years.
I keep my children safe and protected from all my baggage. They get to have a normal childhood, and they're not affected by my life.
For an artist or an entertainer, it's the ultimate when you can go to the forest when you're done your work and escape.
It's very difficult to break in Europe unless you break in England, and it's very difficult to break in England if you're Irish.
It's pretty weird when you are just touring all the time and you don't have a normal life. You're out of touch with reality too much.
It's important to take time off because it's a long journey this life, and I want to be singing in 30 years' time. You see a lot of artists who get caught up in the here and now, and they just burn themselves out, and I kind of did that myself with my third album.
We all wonder about death, where people go and what happens. But certainly, they cross over from this dimension to another one.
I went to Irish dance when I was four. I was playing the tin whistle when I was five. So I think certain things are bred into you.
I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.
There's always a party in my bus.
Once you succeed at what you're doing, your parents see that what you were doing wasn't so bad after all, though they'd prefer to see you in a secure lifestyle where you have a contract for years and years, or you have a diploma or degree.
I just block out the demons. I sing. I block them away. I put my pain into my music. I paint. I make my own videos. I direct myself. No one directs me anymore. I am in charge of my destiny.
When I got pregnant, I started singing again. It was my saving grace. I literally mean having this amazing human life, and our relationship in the sense of mother and child, redeemed my soul.
I'm an icon. I'm the Queen of Limerick.
I am just trying to live for my kids. It is all about my kids now. I love them endlessly.
What's amazing is - I actually have problems getting it into my head - Canada is so big, right? And Ireland's small, you know; you drive from coast to coast in three hours.
When my grandfather died, I was on tour, and I didn't go to the funeral. I never got to say goodbye, and this is one of the problems of being in a rock band is that you're away, and your loved ones die, and you can't even see them.
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.
My father, I spent a lot of time with him at the hospital. I was with him when he took his last breath, but I felt something coming from him into my hand and into my body.
I thought the best thing to do to bring me back to reality would be to have a child, and by the time I had my first, Taylor, when I was 25, we'd sold 35 million records as a band, and I'd had enough; I knew my sanity was more important than success.
My parents were in the local church choir, and I used to go along and sing and play the organ at all the weddings and christenings.
You know that band that are all over 'Melody Maker,' Huggy Bear, they're just a load of crap, right? Riot grrrl group - y'know, it's all sexism and stuff, women standing up for their rights: 'This girl said this at the gig off the stage.' It's nothing got to do with music. They're probably untalented gits when it comes to the crunch.
I think there's a difference between somebody who grows up in Paris or London and goes to Los Angeles. But if you grow up in the green fields, and you rarely go into the city, you're so overprotected that when you do go to L.A., it's almost a bigger slap in the head.
There's no point in getting too worried about things, because life is too short.
Men have no idea how much more difficult it is for women in the rock and roll industry, and while we are trying to give birth, breastfeed, all they do is have a good time.
My husband Don's mother, Denise, was diagnosed with cancer, and she was given eight months to live. We decided to go and stay there and help live her days with her, 'cause you don't get those chances again, right?
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 look like that in the morning: my hair's all greasy - it's not, 'Hey, look at the babe of the band!' I hate that kind of thing, the way women are always pushed forward as beauties... it's very easy: you can make the ugliest pig look lovely in a photograph.
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