Lykke Li Quotes

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

Games bring another level out in you. There is no way you can train to the same intensity when you are playing a game. It is just impossible. Your head won't allow you to do it. Because the adrenalin of a game and the importance of it steps it up to another level.

When I started performing I was like, "Holy hell, how am I going to survive this?" I was giving it my all in 15 minutes but now I had to do it for two hours.

It's physically very, very, very trying to be onstage as a performer, not unlike an athlete, for thirty years.

I think there's going to be pressure on all the British athletes. It's a home Olympics at the end of the day. I like adrenaline, that's something I feed off. I'm just going to go out there and do my best.

So much of performing is a mind game.

You're in front of an audience, but you're playing for a camera. There's this huge adrenaline rush, because you know that besides the audience in the studio, there are millions of people watching at home.

A lot of racers have some of their best days when they're sick.

Playing a stadium is a big adrenaline boost for me and I dig it. It keeps me on my toes and makes me revamp everything I'm doing and not get stagnant with how I approach every show, which is something I like.

People expect you to play your best, so I go through a routine to prepare myself so that I know I'm physically and mentally ready - prepared for the game.

When you're headlining, people are paying to come see you specifically. It's a different kind of pressure, because you've got to deliver. You've got to give these people what they paid for. It's a different mind state, a different type of mentality, but it's honestly a pretty good problem to have, you know?

All my friends are usually at festivals... I just have so much adrenaline running, I literally could run a marathon after my shows.

Most of my best games were when I felt crap - I could hardly move on the morning of the World Cup semi-final in 1990 - but there's a thing called adrenaline that gets you through.

I know if I want to have a chance to beat the top players, I need to be mentally ready for that.

There's variables at every single gig. I look forward to those every night. We have a lot of things that happen in our show, a lot of people from the outside watching the show might think it's one schtick after the next. We promised ourselves we have to be there mentally. We have to be aware. We are forced to be aware.

Before competition, I start to question things. I don't know why it happens, but you've got to control it so you don't get too far out of the race.

It is exhilarating and dangerous to perform live. You are walking a tight rope in front of hundreds of people: anything could happen on stage, and whatever does, you must find a way to make it work.

It's such a high-pressure form of live entertainment that I found, once I got out there, being on a movie set isn't that different from being on 'Monday Night RAW.' It's all stuff that I was prepared for.

When I perform live, I'm doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don't think about it too much.

I had gigged so much from the age of 11 to 20 that I got to a stage where I actually got less nervous the bigger the gig. But you need those butterflies: they make you feel alive.

At a track, it's different, there's pressure, things like this, so to be yourself is a bit different.

No matter how much you train, you can't replicate the stresses that the body takes when it's in a competitive environment.

A concert is my experimentation time. I practice playing something several different ways, but in a concert, inevitably I get more ideas onstage, in that combination of focus and adrenaline, than I could ever get in the practice room.

Some guys lock up when they hear the crowd. I feel the energy and take it with me into the fight. I've been in front of huge crowds and know to use that energy.

I'm a guy who likes to have fun, and I like everything normal people like, but I am always quoted before the fight when I'm jet-lagged and focused. In everyday life, I am different.