Sinead O'Connor Quotes

'The Outsider' is a culmination of a lot of things I've been working diligently toward as a recording artist. Hopefully it will render my past pigeonholing obsolete while positioning me more solidly as a socially conscious American singer/songwriter. Wouldn't that be entertaining?

Bowie mattered to me. He reinvented himself so many times - it must have been a daring statement to do that, risking failure. And hanging out with him and seeing him like that - he's my dad's age, born in the same month - when you find someone who's been through a really dark period, which most of his music I care about is from, Low, Lodger, "Heroes" era.... But he came out of it and made something that mattered.

When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.

In a career, when you hit 40 and you've done a lot of this and that, you want to try some new things. I feel like that as a director, too, from one film to the other.

I can now shed the child-actor thing, like the fat, and start a new career, because no one sees me as Dudley.

I had no real education because I was in and out of schools so I decided that I would completely change my look, change my image, change my name and move to New York.

Becoming Miss America was one of those things. It immediately changed what I thought I was going to do with the rest of my life.

I wanted to change my image. That's why I did 'Aradhana.'

I think the music that I'm writing and the stuff I'm going to do as I age will age.

I feel like every album we make, that's our debut album.

I never want to make a complete, 180 reactional record. I wanted a connection to what I've done in the past but still move forward and evolve.

I've changed my music from time to time so I'm hoping that I can completely change my life from time to time, too. Like live in another land, in another place, and just get completely soaked up in another way of being. Could be in this country or another country, somewhere were you can be reborn a number of times not just creatively, but personally as well. I guess I want to go through life as more than one person.

I can't imagine being sixty years of age and playing music I wrote when I was in my twenties. I would rather sail the sea of consequence to new lands. Laps around the shallow end of the pool, not for me.

I peeled off La Brea and went home and instantly made a reservation to come back to New York. Essentially, I fired everybody that was in my life, my agent, my lawyer, my manager, my girlfriend and came back to New York.

It's something I've recognized in the careers of those people who have been inspiring to me over the years - Neil Young, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Frank Zappa, and Prince. These are all people who constantly redefined themselves, and had to deal with the difficulty of trying to take their audience with them when they did that.

Especially after the Chicks' success, it's hard to think of starting over.

The whole 'Djesse' project is, like, the paramount example of something that has evolved alongside me creating it. It started as one album, and then I realized that I had too many ideas for just one album.

When I shaved my hair, my friends asked me to keep it, maybe make my own wig out of it, but I wanted the old hair to go; it was not mine. I wanted to let go.

I think of the pop music that I've made in the past and hear on the radio as candy bars. And I was really good at making candy bars.

For awhile there, I kind of hit the plateau. Anytime you do that as an artist, one of two things can happen... you're either going to start to fall back off, or you're gonna start to rise.

It's one of those things that gets written off as humorous when you watch a child entertainer try to redefine themselves, but it can be an intense identity crisis.

I've established a certain voice over my albums. It can be an obstacle, but in the end, I think it's a strength, because I can build upon that voice, which is ultimately very much mine.

I would honestly be elated if I could wave a magic wand and eradicate my back catalog and then have a fresh crack at some of those ideas.

I feel like Drake is doing exactly what I plan on doing, just being sick for all of, what, a decade now? And just always being able to switch it up and never stay in one box.

I just want to be a part of a band that will be able to reinvent themselves, you know.