Dolores O'Riordan

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

“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...”

“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, to...”

“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...”

“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 despera...”

“I'm an icon. I'm the Queen of Limerick.”

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

“I don't appreciate people invading my privacy.”

“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 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 si...”

“There's no point in getting too worried about things, because life is too short.”

“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 ju...”

“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 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.”

“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 lov...”

“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 kin...”

“The writing became a hobby in the background: it took a back seat to parenthood and being a person and being a human being.”

“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.”

“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 sittin...”