It was great about the sizes of the audiences we were getting in America, but sometimes you feel like telling some of the men that you're not on stage to have your body looked at.

My parents were in the local church choir, and I used to go along and sing and play the organ at all the weddings and christenings.

Each gig is brilliant and fun. When it becomes a routine, we'll take a break. There's no point in doing it if you don't enjoy it.

I missed a lot of family weddings and funerals because we were out on the road and had these big gigs, and you can't pull out of these gigs at the last minute because too many people are counting on it. It got to the point where I was consumed with that.

When I got pregnant, I started singing again. It was my saving grace. I literally mean having this amazing human life, and our relationship in the sense of mother and child, redeemed my soul.

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 desperate to have a reality, friends, a regular, boring life. I missed that.

There's always a party in my bus.

For a while there, our writing got really edgy... I've always written about experiences, so when your life gets a bit crazy, you start to write songs that are a bit edgy.

We have a certain bond that we don't have with anyone else on the planet. You just have that bond, that journey when you are in a band together.

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.

I worked myself into a frenzy. By 1996, I had a nervous breakdown just from working. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, just getting anxiety attacks and all of that stuff because I was doing too much, too young, all the time.

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.

It's very difficult to break in Europe unless you break in England, and it's very difficult to break in England if you're Irish.

I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.

I didn't get a lot of attention from my dad when I was young. That's a big part of it for girls. Because your dad is the first love of your life. If he doesn't put you on his lap and give you a pet, you do end up not really liking yourself that much.

My husband Don's mother, Denise, was diagnosed with cancer, and she was given eight months to live. We decided to go and stay there and help live her days with her, 'cause you don't get those chances again, right?

I think there's a difference between somebody who grows up in Paris or London and goes to Los Angeles. But if you grow up in the green fields, and you rarely go into the city, you're so overprotected that when you do go to L.A., it's almost a bigger slap in the head.

My father, I spent a lot of time with him at the hospital. I was with him when he took his last breath, but I felt something coming from him into my hand and into my body.

Only we were in The Cranberries. Only we know what it was like being in that crazy whirlwind of fame. We have children and spouses and lives, but there is only one Cranberries.

When The Cranberries got really big in Ireland, it became difficult for me to be there with all the photographers and paparazzi.

A lot of these songs just came from day-to-day experiences. And it was a very natural, kind of organic process.

For an artist or an entertainer, it's the ultimate when you can go to the forest when you're done your work and escape.

What's amazing is - I actually have problems getting it into my head - Canada is so big, right? And Ireland's small, you know; you drive from coast to coast in three hours.

I was so young when I got so famous, and then I kind of put up a wall around myself. I didn't really want to show people any fragilities or fears; I was trying to be this tough person that I felt was expected of me.