The best restriction I learned was getting into the habit of doing something, even if I didn't feel like it, instead of running away from it. Sometimes good work needs to be earned, and when you can overcome yourself, the muse notices and celebrates.

Damien Rice

Categorized in : You Good Best Work

Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again.

Damien Rice

how-to-love steps order

I want to get comfortable with my insecurities until I am no longer insecure. I want to be comfortable in my skin so that I do not need to dump any of my discomfort onto someone else in the form of judgment.

Damien Rice

insecure insecurity skins

May you be satisfied to never know why-sometimes someone just wants to die.

Damien Rice

suicidal want may

It's not hard to grow when you know that you just don't know.

Damien Rice

hard grows knows

Love taught me to cry

Damien Rice

cry sadness shy

For me, the more I live, the more I need to write. The more I push myself to really live and really experience things and step outside of my comfort zone, the more the songs are allowed to flow.

Damien Rice

comfort writing song

I feel like I'm moving from a world where I was creating fantasies that weren't real inside - and very often feeling really dissatisfied - to now living in reality for the first time in my life since I was a kid, and learning to appreciate where I am now while actually sitting with that reality.

Damien Rice

real kids moving

I want to keep a thread between the studio and the stage, and I want to flow more easily from one to the other.

Damien Rice

stage flow want

Stones taught me to fly

Damien Rice

break-up lying fall

My eyes were closed, they're open now

Damien Rice

eye

When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.

Damien Rice

iceland path littles

When you go to bed at night, you get seven or eight hours of sleep. I've had enough sleep. I've rested, and it's as simple as that. I want to do it now. I didn't want to three years ago. I was waiting until it felt right. I wanted to get back to falling in love with my guitar again, and hanging out with my guitar like I would a friend.

Damien Rice

falling-in-love simple sleep

I had to take a bit of a break and fast for a while, but then I found myself very, very hungry when I got back to [song-writing].

Damien Rice

hungry writing song

The songs I was writing still had lyrics or sentiments that didn't match what I was feeling. It was old, negative energy coming out of me still, but it needed to all get out so I could trash those songs and put them in the bin. And then I was able to let the new songs out.

Damien Rice

feelings writing song

They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged.

Damien Rice

records guilt pay

A kite needs to be tied down in order to fly. I learned how important restrictions can sometimes be in order to experience freedom.

Damien Rice

fly experience freedom sometimes

I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

Damien Rice

skin i-am life people

Being able to walk out of the studio after a week of intense recording and jump into a cold sea and sit in a hot spring and soak for a few hours completely resets the whole system. Really refreshing. For me, it's all about stepping out of the ordinary. Even psychically.

Damien Rice

walk me sea hot

Leonard Cohen has a way with words and with humor that remind me to lighten up, which I appreciate very much.

Damien Rice

words me humor way

I do not want to be a robot, a cog in society who answers 'yes' because 'yes' is considered the appropriate answer. Neither do I want to be a protestor. I just want to seek out what lies underneath the veils of politeness and programming that I've been given as a person in this society.

Damien Rice

answer person society want