Damien Rice quotes:

Inside, I've got a real purist desire and dream about the music. I like the idea of being able to carve out a kind of magical, colourful, artistic, inspirational life. And the reality just turns out to be quite different, working with the business to bring this thing you have created into the world.

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.

When I started off in music, I started with a real innocence, a real love for the instrument, the writing the songs, the playing the songs and the sharing and the recording and experimenting. It was exciting. Then, this thing called success came, and something happened at some point where I became disenchanted, and I lost the innocence.

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

There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.

Cold,cold water,surrounds me now,and all I've got is your hand.

I live with myself. I wake up with myself, I eat, and I take a dump with myself. I don't see anything special there. I do all the same things other human beings and creatures do. I don't see any need to be telling the data of the day of this particular human being by posting it on online. It's not interesting to me.

Stones taught me to fly, love taught me to lie, life taught me to die, so it's not hard to fall when you flow like a cannonball

I've learned very, very, very clearly that money does not equal happiness or security, either.

Music enables me to cleanse and shed the things that I feel are holding me back from growing, or growing up.

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

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.

I was on paper earning more money and having more success than I'd ever had. And it was also the most miserable I've ever been. When those things collided, I realised something was off. That's when I started poking around to figure out what was wrong.

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.

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.

I just don't like to do a lot of the normal things expected of other artists. I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to stick with what it is I want to do.

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

I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.

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

There are a bunch of songs that I think are beautiful recordings, and I'm proud of them, but I've no interest in listening to them.

I'm not the guy that wants to be famous and make loads of money and sell loads of records. I don't want that. I just want to be true. I want to be... I want to serve music. I want to be honest.

I don't want to stand in front of a whole lot of fakeys. If I'm going to meet someone and say hello, I want to feel like I'm really meeting that person, not a masked version. I want to give that to people when they meet me. You don't have to like it. I'm not looking for you to like it; I'm looking to be myself.

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.

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.

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

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.

Love tought me to cry. So come on courage, teach me to be shy.

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

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

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.

My eyes were closed, they're open now

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].