Top 122 Quotes & Sayings by Lykke Li - Page 2

I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I never took music lessons. I was just playing around in front of the mirror and being silly, then suddenly I started making songs.

Being on tour really takes a toll, so you have to find ways to stay healthy.

Mum is a photographer, and Dad does world music and plays almost every instrument except for drums.

I am such a complex person. I have so many different layers of my personality to choose from. I am super-sensitive, and I am super-strong.

The music that I listen to is very minimalistic. I listen to a lot of old blues that is just guitar and vocals.

It's a very proactive thing to be dealing with your darkness and getting it out of your system. So it doesn't have to be in your system.

During the day, I don't wear much makeup; I only put on makeup for the show.

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music.

I'm a vagabond. I live out of one suitcase. I feel very comfortable in black. I feel very uncomfortable in anything else than black.

I don't feel Swedish. In fact, my father tells me to get out of here as soon as I can.

I don't live anywhere. I have always dreamed of moving out of my country because Sweden is boring.

I want people to have a good time. It's boring only to hear singer/songwriters spilling their guts.

Where I've been hasn't influenced my music. It's more what I listen to. You can find music everywhere, so moving hasn't really influenced my music, more me as a person.

My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.

I was going on this desert adventure with some friends and we were like, "How amazing would it be to just drag all these mirrors out there?" A lot of times I do things as an impulse and find out my inspirations afterward. Even with songs and lyrics, it can take me years to find out what I was actually trying to do.

I think I've been a bit misunderstood; the first record was more timid than I wanted it to be. I don't like getting pinned down by sex or how I sound like because it's not who I am or what I want to be.

I'm from Sweden so I don't enjoy winter at all; there's nothing cute about it.

A lot of times females are in charge because they kind of have the pussy power. If they say, "I'm you're prostitute," then they mean, "I'm the power."

I dove into the craziness and did things that maybe I would think twice about when I get older.

I wanted to create something really aggressive and psychedelic

People comment on how you look, it's so unnecessary. I just wanted people to listen to what I have to say instead of focusing on anything else.

Los Angeles is such a mysterious place because there's so much evil in that city, but there's also so much light. You can be totally alone on a hillside and I love that kind of secluded, deserted rawness.

You can't stay in the desert, you go nuts after 24 hours.

My whole art is based on escaping life and reality, which might not the best tendency to have when you're trying to be a good person in general. But people can escape into my world easily - artists are supposed to create a keyhole that people can look into.

Life is greater when I'm dealing with something than when I'm just dreaming away.

In every person's life, around 27 to 29 years old, the stars and the planets align themselves to exactly the way they were when you were born. You're faced with yourself. There's no running away.

I do it live on tape with a band. It's not like I'm doing electronic music with a laptop.

The key to a good life is finding things that you want to master.

I relate to hustlers who want to get out of where they are and create something different for themselves.

I would want to create an amphitheater outside of California where I would play everyday, and then people would have to come to me. I would create all this crazy stage decor and film it. Or I would just stay inside my home and do films. I would be like the modern Maya Deren.

I remember watching Romeo + Juliet when I was 14 and listening to the soundtrack. When I hear that soundtrack now, all those emotions come back. It's really beautiful when you're at a certain point in your life where most of the adventure lies ahead of you. And it's a sad thing when you feel like you've lost that. But you can get it back.

I was 19 when I recorded my first album, and I've been exposed to many things during these last few years; all the baby fat is gone.

I had to do this album. I tried thinking, "I'm not going to do it." But then I'm sitting there getting all suicidal and depressed, and I just start writing. It's like this inner drive. If I could choose, I would probably be living in the countryside and be fine with that, but I'm not.

?he older you get, the more baggage you have, and the harder it is to just split.

After you've been wounded a few times, it's hard to let somebody get that deep again.

It's not a very sane thing to try to be great all the time.

It's not a very sane thing to try to be great all the time. You want to make something magical; you want to make something wonderful; you want to give to everybody; you want to heal people; you want to still be inspired. That's not easy.

Of course, there are a lot of things I'm angry about in the world.

I want to get my music out there. I enjoy playing shows; I just don't enjoy airports. I want to be more creative, but it's hard to get into that zone on tour.

Sometimes women are so great and powerful, but then they surrender to these vain things. They kind of fall for it.

I hate the fact you always feel like you have to be going somewhere, like the end destination is to be finished, or to be happy. But the truth is a lot of us are completely lost, and we don’t know, and that is also a state of mind, to not know who you are and where you’re going.

It's not about being a sex prostitute. It's about this power play in the war of the sexes. It's a rat race, like, "I'm in charge," "No, I'm in charge."

I was inspired by [Michelangelo] Antonioni's Red Desert - very big and moody.

I had a period after touring the first record where I didn't agree with the way things worked in the music industry as far as how you release music, demand, the pace of everything. You don't know who's talking to you. Who's Spotify? Who's iTunes? Who are all those bloggers? Who says I have to do this? Why do you have to do all this press? Why do I have to do so many shows? Why do I have to do a regular album right now? I don't understand it.

I know that I'm dealing with some kind of wound through my music.

I don't love all hip-hop, but I do relate to stuff like early Nas, 2Pac, Biggie, and MF Doom because they're also trying to escape a scenario.

I hung out with some crazy desert people. One guy was just walking around with only shorts on - he'd been walking with bare feet for the last two years. He was totally scarred and eating on all fours like a dog.

I can cry myself to sleep because I'm not as great as Leonard Cohen, but who cares? Maybe you can't be as great as some people, but it's a tragedy when you don't follow your dreams.

I always want to keep things unwritten. I'm inspired by Bob Dylan, who's kept evolving and changing his sound. I think that's what you should do as an artist. Why be comfortable?

I'm a really restless person; I'm tired of the way I sounded or looked yesterday. So it's hard to hang onto this image of me as this young Swedish female in this world.

Because you're a woman, the music industry puts you in another corner. I want to be fighting with the men. I want to be amongst the men, topless, throwing things onstage. Pitchfork: Whe

It would be amazing if people listened to it when they needed shelter; it would be lovely if they didn't spit on it.

I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet. I fantasize about having a home, which I've kind of never had.

I probably thought that about most of the things I did. But you wind up in situations where you have to make decisions very quickly, and you just go for it a lot of the time.

I don't think Neil Young has a beautiful voice but it's something that grabs you and the songs are so good.

I'm really depressing. Some people watch comedy to relax. I watch 21 Grams. I can recognize sadness and tragedy really easily because it's been with me forever.

I want to do a stripped-down album. That style is actually where my heart is - storytelling and just letting the voice and the lyrics talk for themselves. I still want to write the perfect song and sing it in the most honest, undressed way. But I feel like I have to gather more experiences and more layers in my voice. I have to live more to be able to tell this tale. So I'm saving my folk record. I have a feeling nobody will understand it.

I'm a girl from Sweden. I took a lot of risks and went to New York by myself when I was 19 just because I read about it in a few books. I came here knowing nobody, having no money, and now I'm doing all these things like making records and videos every day.

I believe life's too short for compromises and bad fitting jeans

I feel it's so important to have strong women around you.