I think there's a lot that's beautiful about religion and very inspiring, obviously, but I do think that God needs to be rescued from religion actually.

When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy...I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences.

Nobody gets between me and my microphone.

Women are to be valued for so much more than their sexuality. We aren’t merely objects of desire.

In my belief, there's one spirit. I prefer to call it the Holy Spirit. I don't think it matters if you call it God or Allah or Jesus or Fred or David or too early in the morning or whatever.

I think that music has been a great help to me and this has been confirmed by every psychiatrist I have seen. I would probably be dead if not for music.

I feel that I was a useful contributor to society, and that I couldn't be a contributor to society in any other way.