“I think, generally like my experience of kind of being in the public domain, is something that you obviously learn a lot about kind of what you’re comfortable with and what you’re not comfortable with, and I think–I think when I started in the band [One Direction], we were kind of encouraged to give a lot of ourselves away, you know, to kind of like, let people get to know you, and I think kind of finishing that and then when I started working on my own stuff, I felt like that there were parts of that where I was kind of, just kind of learning my own…what I was comfortable with and trying to like, have kind of parts of my personal life be more private and the last time we were touring and stuff - I think touring is quite an isolating experience, and on top of that when we started touring it was 2021, so it was kind of like, still depths of you know, the pandemic. We were like one of the first tours to go back out. So I think that tour started in that way where it was like – I was really bubbled up even kind of within the tour, and then staying on that tour, you know, we put an album out and it ended up being like, two and a half years type time…it’s just a long time to to be in like, a bubble where you’re not really spending that much time in the world around you other than shows and hotels and stuff, and when I finished, I kind of went off and was spending a lot of time in Italy and having this quiet time, and I was just feeling a lot of my life as I was kind of like, craving like quiet and kind of like private spaces, I was just feeling myself kind of like shut out a lot of the world, I think, and I think the last couple of years, for me, was about, there’s a lot of things that I got used to saying no to, like invites from friends and like, maybe a weekend trip or like a birthday party or something […] I just got used to, you know, if I have a week at home I don’t want to go somewhere else for three days, I just want to stay home, you know? And I think when I got to Italy and was kind of, out in this quiet place I felt like ‘okay, if I’m going to spend all this time out here, and I’m gonna keep saying no to everything, I am just gonna like, shut myself off from the world’ and while some parts of that sound appealing, I also like, I love people, and I love being in the world, so, it was kind of - I think for me, there’s been both the thing of like learning to set boundaries and stuff, and a large part of that has also been learning not to set boundaries and when to open up, being intentional with the things that you don’t do and be intentional with the things that you do do so there’s a message in the album sleeve where I said like ‘thanks to all the people who helped me know when to say no and when to say yes’ and I think both of those have like, greatly enriched my life.”
— Harry on isolation and wanting to open himself up to life again. (via Q with Tom Power)
