Psychological Preparation Quotes

In horror stories or in fairy tales, the fascination with the morbid is also, at least for me, a way to prepare for the unthinkable… That’s why it’s very important for me to show the artificiality of it all, because the real horrors of the world are unmatchable, and they’re too profound. It’s much easier to absorb – to be entertained by it, but also to let it affect you psychologically – if it’s done in a fake, humorous, artificial way.

The first time I played a killer, in the 1997 film 'Mojo,' I went to my local video shop and got out a video of real executions and a history of the Third Reich. The guy in the shop was giving me a look. I thought this would help, but I don't think it made any difference, and I don't want to see any more executions.

I like to get in my own world. When I'm getting ready for a meet, I always have headphones on, listening to rap music to get myself fired up

My life has always been a series of challenges and I'm psychologically-prepared but this is the biggest challenge of my life.

The process of playing a character as dark as Omar Saeed Sheikh is disturbing. So you have to mentally also be in that psyche, that state of mind. So, it was not easy. I was trying to cultivate a lot of anger and hatred in me while portraying him, because that's what I read and heard about him.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

Casey wanted us to stay loose. That didn't mean clowning around. He just meant we should be confident and relaxed. We shouldn't feel that one strikeout was going to end the season for us.

I can't say that I was my happiest on court, but I felt completely free. Free from family obligations, free from my own torment. In a real sense I was a different person. It was a place where I could not tolerate the idea of being beaten. I psyched myself up into a state where I felt something close to hatred towards my opponent, a state where I detested the idea of someone making his name at the expense of Jimmy Connors. I was in my element on court, measuring myself against someone else. I was not competitive for show. It came from deep within.

On the whole, the life of a chess professional is not as easy as it appears at first sight. One needs to devote some ten hours a day to chess and to everything connected with it - physical and psycholgical preparation.

Twenty seconds before a race, there's absolute focus. The key thing is to achieve relaxation, but at the same to have absolute total control. You've got to find the balance between being totally ready to go and being really at peace with yourself as well.

For me, pressure is self-imposed, and it's good for me. The best actors are the most prepared because it's all imaginary and you have to know the character inside out.

Most of actor's work is done at home, in your hotel room, in the wee hours of the morning thinking and reading and feeling, walking around and listening to music. It really just because an internal exercise, whatever skills. It's great if you have to learn something new for a gig and designing a character physically is always fun but it does become an internal exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.

My first part was in a film where I played a sadomasochist who killed people and created fun orgies. I'm a method actor. I went to every orgy in the world.

I think there's always mental and physical aspects of football.

I know there's a lot of pressure, but I'm just going to go out and play my game.

I like to do my research, get in the right mental state for the person I'll be portraying. A lot of time, it's just incorporating a lot of what that person would be into, into my daily routine.

The idea is that if we can put our own people through something almost as bad as what they might have to go through if they were taken captive, they will inoculate themselves.

I'd never watch a horror film, but after I found out I was going to be in one, I watched, like, four of them, including The Shining, I was terrified - I couldn't sleep for days. But I wanted to get myself used to things I was going to see on the set.

Is it useful to feel fear, because it prepares you for nasty events, or is it useless, because nasty events will occur whether you are frightened or not?

On the 'Revenge' set, even if they're not showing my feet, I'll still wear my heels because it gets me in the feeling of Ashley Davenport.

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before.

Luther deters me from solitariness; but he does not mean from a sober solitude that rallies our scattered strengths and prepares us against any new encounter from without.

The rapid growth of prenatal testing has had some undeniably positive effects: A woman who knows she will bear a child with a handicap can plan to deliver in a hospital equipped for risky births. And many couples prefer the opportunity to prepare psychologically for the work of raising a disabled child.

I have been here before in my head. To everyone else, it is my first Olympics. To me, it's my thousandth.

Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated , and defended privately by each person.