You have to hide what you are and it's really stressful and very bad for your self esteem. Because it's not obvious to people that you are ill, they treat you as if you're a pain in the ass, then you beat yourself up and you are already beating yourself up as a part of mental illness.

There's a difference between, you know, God loves unconditionally in my feeling and religion loves conditionally. Religion spends an awful lot of time dictating who God can love and can't love.

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.

I don't believe in any kind of artistic snobbery or musical snobbery. You know, to me, the sexiest and the most spiritual words ever uttered in rock and roll are wop babaloo balop bam boom.

What I hope is to really focus on being a songwriter. I'd love to write songs for other people; that's something I'd really like to start doing.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm now in the business of making spiritual records and using my voice for that purpose. I'm not going to be singing songs that I made in the past. I closed the door on that incarnation of Sinead O'Connor.

I think a lot of artists go waving their Grammies around thanking God for their Grammy, but when it comes to a pitch battle in the street for the honor of God, none of them is anywhere to be found.