Nothing Compares (2022)

Sinéad O'Connor: Self

Quotes 

• Sinéad O'Connor : They broke my heart and they killed me. But, I didn't die. They tried to bury me. They didn't realize I was a seed.

• Sinéad O'Connor : There's no way I'm going to shut my mouth. I am a battered child, and the whole bloody world is going to know about it, the same as they are gonna know about every other battered child. They are not going to be able to shut us up just because they don't want to hear about it.

• Sinéad O'Connor : You can go around trying to please everyone as if you're in a popularity contest, and yeah, that might get you lots and lots of money, but that's not necessarily going to be keeping the contract that you made with yourself.

• [first lines] 

  Sinéad O'Connor : I didn't mean to be strong. I wasn't thinking to myself, "I must be strong." I didn't know I was strong. I did suffer through a lot because everybody felt it was okay to kick the shit out of me. I regret that I was so sad because of it. I regret that I spent so many years very lonely and isolated, really.

• Sinéad O'Connor : There was no therapy when I was growing up. So, the reason I got into music, really, was therapy. Which is why it was such a shock for me to become a pop star. Its not what I wanted. I just wanted to scream.

• Sinéad O'Connor : You often hear artists saying they're channeling something. I think, actually, you're channeling yourself - your self-conscious is talking to you. I just had these songs inside me that had to come out.

• Sinéad O'Connor : My mother was a beast and I was able to soothe her with my voice. Those were the years my voice would make the devil fall asleep.

• Sinéad O'Connor : When I'm 11 my brother comes home with "Slow Train Coming" which completely changes my life and makes we want to be a musician and makes we want to be an artist and makes me know what kind of artist I want to be - because the song, "Gotta Serve Somebody" - and I was obsessed with Bob Dylan from then on.

• Sinéad O'Connor : It ain't worth it for shit fuckin' record. I just knew that I didn't want any man telling me who I could be or what I could be or what to sound like. I came from a patriarchal country where I'm being told everything I can and can't do because I'm a girl. I figure well if I didn't take it from the system and I didn't take if from my Daddy, I ain't taking if from anybody else.

• Sinéad O'Connor : When I leave Ireland, it's virtually unheard of for a woman to be making her own living and independent of men. The Irish fucking Constitution still contains the wording that a woman's place is in the home. So, I was very lucky. From 1985 I was making my own living. So many people in this country, women in particular, have to say no when they wanted to say yes to themselves.

• Sinéad O'Connor : If you don't identify emotionally with a song, you can't sing it.

• Sinéad O'Connor : They wanted me to grow the hair long and wear short skirts and high heels, make-up, and the whole works, and write songs that wouldn't challenge anything. But, then, I come from a country where there used to be riots in the streets over plays. That's what art is for.

• Sinéad O'Connor : I'm an Irish artist and there's a tradition among Irish artists as being agitators and activist. You know, whether they're playwrights or poets.

• Sinéad O'Connor : I'm on stage and the audience started are making this mad noise where half of them are booing and half of them are cheering. And it's the fucking weirdest noise I've heard in my life. And it made me want to puke... My song that I was supposed to sing at Madison Square Garden was "I Believe in You." This song was to be sung in a whisper and I knew that I couldn't, because I wouldn't be heard. I would've been drowned out. I couldn't have that. "Are you going to stand by me?" was almost what I felt God was saying to me. "Are you going to fucking stand by me or are you going to pussy out of here and walk off stage?"

• Sinéad O'Connor : I think it's funny that the world fell in love with me because of crying and a tear. I went and did a lot of crying and everybody was like "Oh, you crazy bitch." But, actually, hold on, you fell in love with that tear. That was a mirror.

• Sinéad O'Connor : An artist's job is sometimes to create the difficult conversations that need to be had and it's none of my business what anyone thinks of me when I do that.

• Sinéad O'Connor : I was always being crazied by the media, made out to be crazy. I don't blame anybody for thinking I was crazy or for hating me for it or for whatever. Cause they didn't know. And it was a crazy idea of me. This bitch is saying that priests are raping children. I mean, Jesus Christ. Of course it seemed crazy to them.

• Sinéad O'Connor : [singing]  Thank you for hearing me, Thank you for hearing me, Thank you for hearing me, Thank you for hearing me, Thank you for loving me, Thank you for loving me, Thank you for loving me, Thank you for loving me, Thank you for seeing me, Thank you for seeing me, Thank you for seeing me, Thank you for seeing me, And for not leaving me, And for not leaving me, And for not leaving me, And for not leaving me, Thank you for staying with me, Thank you for staying with me, Thank you for staying with me, Thank you for staying with me...