Rememberings

by Sinéad O'Connor

Me and my sister used to talk to all the Mormon men in town just because they were American, even though our mother told us not to. They looked so handsome, like movie stars in their suits. They worked in pairs, standing in the streets trying to convert Irish people (so sweet they thought such a thing could ever succeed). But all they were converting were teenage girls from lusting after teenage boys to lusting after grown men, particularly grown men in suits.

We really are a very messed-up family. We don’t even suit that word, family. It should be a comforting word. But it’s not. It’s a painful, stabbing word. Cuts the heart into pieces. And all the more because it’s too late to go back and do anything differently.

Kids are the market, but you have to keep them believing they’re worth less than the stars or they won’t think they need what stars are selling.

One whole wall of the downstairs sitting room is a glass window facing Los Angeles. At night, it’s like a black frame around the lights of living hell. Every time the dusk comes, I get anxious.

One week on speed in the locked ward of the nuthouse. It made me want to write. I wish I had some now, in fact. But I vowed never to take it again because I loved it so much.

And it is also the case that if anyone wants to truly know me, the best way is through my songs. There is nothing I could write in this book or tell you that would help you get to know me. It is all in the songs.