“A lot of people say, ‘You destroyed your career by tearing up a picture of the pope‘” – on an infamous apperance on US TV in 1992 – “but I define success differently in this spiritually bereft business. To me, it’s ‘Can I be myself?’ I could stand in the street and sing and get enough to pay the bills. I don’t need millions of dollars. That was why I tore up the pope’s picture – I knew I had enough money that I didn’t have to marry a man with a very small penis to get the bills paid. I don’t want any man to have control over me. And that is success.”

 

Sinéad O’Connor: ‘I Define Success Differently’ (Caroline O’Sullivan, Guardian