Gerhard Richter Quotes

I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

I was jumping out of my skin. It was horrible. I was all over the place, because I'd never been in front of a live audience. That's a whole other element in the play, the audience.

I don't know how to let loose when I'm dancing to the music and the people that made the music are watching me. I've never felt so much pressure in my life.

I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there's more people in the audience than I'm used to.

I'm more comfortable performing in front of 50,000 people than five people - it's easier. When there's that many people, I feel like I'm alone. When I perform in front of only a few people, it's scary.

I remember secretly going off and crying. All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?'

I get very uncomfortable with people watching me.

It's hard to write when you think every sentence is going to be read by a million kids.

I have a hard time writing music when I'm on tour.

I would be terrified if Bill Maher was like, 'Hey, do you want to come on the show?' I would be like, 'Oh, God.' It would completely terrify me, even though I'm such a junkie for the show.

Auditioning is the most terrifying thing I've ever done. There must have been four or five of them where I completely froze up and walked out of the room. My palms get sweaty just thinking about it.

When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.

It was in San Diego and I was onstage and couldn't remember how to play the guitar properly. I was in terrible pain and my nervous system was just going wild, like somebody had just run a car over me.

It's a little daunting to know you're going to take off your clothes and 16 million people are going to see it. It's not a normal day at the office.

Generally speaking, the anxiety will pass, which is easy for me to say when I'm not in the middle of an anxiety attack. When you're in the throes of one, it's hard to feel anything other than utter misery and terror.

For me, acting is becoming naked in front of people, you know? And when you know in the back of your mind somebody is testing you, you cannot really bare yourself. That's a feeling I always have when I'm auditioning.

I'm kind of an insecure artist. I hop from piece to piece. I always think my life depends on every painting. Every painting is my first painting.

There was an enormous amount of pressure when my first album took off, and I struggled with the speed of everything and the exhaustion from the constant touring.

I definitely get stage fright.

Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house.

I cannot give a single concert at which I do not play one piece after the other in an agony of terror because my memory threatens to fail me. This fear torments me for days beforehand.

I'm tired of being in a band, but I do want to continue making records and performing, at least a little bit. Making the records isn't always fun. It's fun to be finished with them. Making beautiful things can be quite painful.

For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn't know what I was doing.

When you're shooting, there's terrible pressure, and you never switch off. Every day is like the day before an exam; it's relentless.

Put me in a room with a songwriter, and I just clam up. I get shy.