Lykke Li quotes:

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.

The problem is, when I talk about heartbreak or whatever, people want to melt it down to some break-up of a relationship, but it's not about that. If you're a sensitive person, just stepping outside can be heartbreaking.

If you're being ignored, that's a good time to concentrate on finding yourself and creating your own mystery.

My favorite thing in the world is to have just a big dinner with friends and just sit and talk about their life and their difficulties and all of that.

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 going to be like Benjamin Button; I'm just going to grow younger. I will probably be happy, fat, with kids and looking back and thinking, 'I was such a angry young woman.'

I remember watching films in my teenage years, and you'd be in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, and then a song would come on. You'd love that song forever; it changed your life.

I don't want to break someone's heart, but you can't control that. A broken heart happens; that's inevitable.

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.

I do everything: I'll have a green juice, then a melted chocolate ice cream. I stay up very late, I get up very early.

I struggle with myself every day - I am a lonesome person. I talk to my family - and I connect to some people deeply along the way - but I am a restless soul. Singing is the most immediate relief.

It's amazing, coconut oil. I use it as a moisturizer. I put it in my hair when I want a kind of greasy look. I take off my makeup with it. I put a little bit in my coffee. I have coconut oil with everything.

I honestly kind of hate shopping. My favorite places to shop are rich old lady consignment stores.

I'm interested in a lot of different sounds and types of music.

I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.

I always strive for freedom: freedom of thought and expression.

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

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

I'm not so interested in being indie just for the sake of being indie.

My favourite festival experience is a show at midnight with the moon blazing and a crowd full of open hearts ready to dance.

You can become quite blase, and also, I have no sense of home; I don't have roots. I've never had that feeling that someone else is going to take care of me, ever. I don't trust people.

I was a total floral hippie as a child so when I finally could make my own choices, I've been living in different black suit jackets and been really drawn to masculine clothes.

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.

Driving, for me, means power and freedom. The feeling that I can go anywhere I want at any time is exhilarating.

If you take the hard facts of a failed relationship, it's pretty grim. But if you make an album out of it, and if the violins represent all the tears, you create something magical out of something very normal.

For men, it's about finding the perfect shoe or the perfect pants that will last you through the years. That's how I want to shop: sustainable, classic, great quality.

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

There's more discomfort being an old soul or a person who questions a lot of things. I'm young, but I'm old.

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.

I will grab any opportunity I can to learn something new.

I always feel like I've been slightly misunderstood. As a woman, you get judged for appearances or things like that I don't really care about.

I'm just not interested in getting judged or getting people to love me. Being seen and taking my photo and having to follow this schedule all the time, I don't enjoy it.

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

It's important that the way you dress tells a story and reveals something about you and your philosophy.

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.

The first thing you do when you get off tour is let off some steam and, you know, have some type of big breakdown.

I felt such a deep connection with dolphins. I felt like they were the only ones who understood me.

I lived five years in Portugal and then spent winters in Nepal or India.

I think pop culture underestimates people. The message is, 'Being yourself is the worst thing you could possibly be.' But people are still attracted to it.

Most things in life come as a surprise.

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

I used to get really sick. I would go to the doctor with all these ailments, and they would tell me I needed to be at home. I didn't even really understand what that meant because since I was a baby, I've always been moving, moving, and then touring.

It's 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 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.

I don't necessarily love all the collaborations that I've done; the more I work with other people, the more I realize that I want to work with myself.

The first tape I got was Madonna's 'Immaculate Collection.' I'm inspired by the way she started from nothing and didn't have a big musical talent, but had a big dream.

I was totally romanticizing the idea of Los Angeles when the Doors, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young were hanging out there.

I'm more old school: I want to be like Keith Richards on stage. It's not interesting to see straight-from-runway clothes slapped on an artist. It's more interesting when you see people who have their own style.

I love listening to demos. They're so raw.

I went to 11 different schools. It was a fantastic adventure, but I was incredibly sensitive and needed a bit more stability.

The profession I have keeps dragging me into drama and taking me away from baking, flowering and gardening.

I've always been a person that is searching for truth and always wants to go further, deeper.

When I play, I'm so in the moment that I can't really remember what happened afterwards. It's a rare experience for a thinking person like me.

If anything, I want to be seen as a singer-songwriter rather than a pop artist.

I'm a very melancholic kind of person. I don't know why; I think certain people are born a certain way.

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."

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

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

Do you have to have emotional turmoil to create music? I'm not sure because I've never been without it

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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 want people to have a good time. Its boring only to hear singer/songwriters spilling their guts.

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 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.

I wanted to create something really aggressive and psychedelic

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 was 21 and homeless - such a broken, lost woman.

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

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'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'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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.