Top 66 Dolores ORiordan Quotes

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.

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.

You can’t be in a situation where you are not happy. It’s as simple as that.

I always come across like I’m looking serious, but I just don’t like smiling. Honestly, obviously I’m different in person.

I am just trying to live for my kids. It is all about my kids now. I love them endlessly.

I don’t appreciate people invading my privacy.

To me, life is a bit of everything. I have the band, I have my kids. Life is a big picture. It’s not just your career.

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.

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?

Why can’t we actually sing and get respected as good singers and songwriters without having our boobs and butt hanging out?

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

I went very close to the edge, but it’s nice to have been strong enough to get through it. I’m lucky I had family, a good husband, and my mom. People like that help balance you. When you’re feeling down and bad, it’s the people that love you who kind of sort your head out for you.

I lived in buses. I didn’t really have anything else. I didn’t feel like a female, and I ended up really kind of isolated. Everybody thinks you’re so happy and so wealthy and such a big star, but you’re really kind of lonely and don’t know how to stop it.

In 1997, we took time off, and that’s when Oasis broke and Princess Diana died and I was home with my baby hating the music industry. People asked what I thought about the Spice Girls, and honestly, I was so happy to tell them I couldn’t be bothered to care.

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?’

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.

It was great about the sizes of the audiences we were getting in America, but sometimes you feel like telling some of the men that you’re not on stage to have your body looked at.

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.

Everyone at school knew I wanted to be a singer. I’d always be banging on the piano playing my new song. The teacher would gather us round, and the whole class would listen.

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.

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 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.

We were never a frivolous band; we prided ourselves on having something to say, and I think that’s what gives your songs longevity.

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.

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

I was so famous that I couldn’t leave the hotel room. I remember looking out of the window at all these fans but just feeling so isolated.

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.

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.

I love to go home to my kids. I don’t have that lull in my life when I didn’t have them.

I enjoyed living in Canada, where my husband comes from, because I was treated like any ordinary person. I became a volunteer at my children’s school; I went into the classroom. It was very grounding. I got sick of being famous.

I guess all bands get to that point where they run out of inspiration and just get bored with the chemistry.

Each gig is brilliant and fun. When it becomes a routine, we’ll take a break. There’s no point in doing it if you don’t enjoy it.

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.

I try to think about optimism. I try to look at the beautiful things in life.

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.

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.

People look at you and see a product. They don’t see a soul. They see an empty hole.

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 didn’t really know many girls, growing up, because there weren’t many other people living around where I lived.

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.

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.

My mom always had a softer spot for boys, as a lot of Irish women do. If you were a girl, you’d have to sing or wear a pretty dress. But boys could just sit there and be brilliant for sitting there and being boys. It makes you that little bit more forward. Pushy. I was singing, always.

When The Cranberries got really big in Ireland, it became difficult for me to be there with all the photographers and paparazzi.

The first album didn’t become successful until the second was practically written.

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.

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

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.

It’s a great gig, really: getting on stage, playing the guitar, singing. For a living, it’s super.

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.

I was at that point where my children needed more than going around the planet in the back of a bus. They needed stability, they needed to build their own lives and relationships, and I needed to put my life on hold. I made my choice – I chose my children.

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.

The things a young woman goes through between the ages of 18 and 20 are far different than what a young woman can go through between 20 and 22.

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.

My kids mean more to me than anything I thought was important when I was younger.

I write about what is getting to me at the time, about the things you need to talk about, but which would sound silly if you sat down and told them to your friend. I only write for myself, to get my emotions out. It’s self-therapeutic.