Roger Federer spoke with reporters in a press conference at Indian Wells on Friday.

• “I knew I was coming to L.A., so I’m kind of thinking, who’s around in L.A.? So, I mean, I rang up Pete [Sampras] and said, you know, ‘any chance?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, sure’... He was one of my favorite players when I was growing up and beating him in his backyard at Wimbledon was so special to me, so I wanted to beat him in his house, you know.” —on practicing with Sampras.

• “Very good, surprisingly. Very good. Not good enough to beat me.” —on Sampras' form

• "This consecutive winning streak record would be very nice, but it’s not my focus here, to be honest." —on being close to breaking Guillermo Vilas' record of winning 46 straight matches

• "I was too much of a perfectionist when I was young. I could never accept any mistakes... eventually I just got it together, you know. But it took me a long time. I thought by the end of my teenage years I would figure it out, but it took me till the beginning of my 20s to really get to understand what I had to do." —on his evolution as a player

• "I went through a very interesting phase in the last ten years, tried to get to the top and staying at the top and facing many different things – media, sponsors, fans, big occasions. And for me, I’ve never had a reason to kind of get crazy about it. I kind of had enough time to grow into the position, you know, because I didn’t come up through juniors and then right away won Wimbledon. It took me a few years. Maybe that was the time to allow me a lot of time to grow as a person first." —on handling his growing fame