Neil Robertson Quotes

I love performing, and I love being in front of people. I love the pressure you get and the pleasure performing brings.

I still suffer terribly from stage fright. I get sick with fear. Not every night, but at the beginning and on occasion - not necessarily when I'm expecting it. You just have to cope with it - take it on the chin and work through it, trying to use the adrenalin to perform.

People think I look odd onstage. But the way I deal with being incredibly nervous is by concentrating really hard.

I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me... My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.

I'm actually sometimes nervous right before a performance, but as soon as I'm on the stage I'm like, 'okay, we're gonna rock this baby.'

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

I can sing in front of people. I can go on a TV show, live, and not feel like I'm going to throw up.

My first show was in front of 30,000 people with will.i.am, and I wasn't even that nervous.

I go through insanity before a show. It's not really a process but it's like absolute mortal fear.

I actually love pressure. I loved playing sport at school in front of a crowd; I love being on stage in front of a big audience. I buzz off that.

To begin with, I don't have any stage fright.

I get nervous playing the Opry still. You take that nervous energy and channel it into being amped.

It's one thing to practise in front of a mirror at home, but another to do it in front of 800 people or on live TV.

I had gigged so much from the age of 11 to 20 that I got to a stage where I actually got less nervous the bigger the gig. But you need those butterflies: they make you feel alive.

The first few years I was competing, I'd ride so well in practice, then choke and fall in competition. Now I take a deep breath and say, 'Look at me. I'm outside. I'm doing what I love.' Still, nothing's matched the pressure I felt standing at the top of the halfpipe for the first time at the Olympics.

People might not believe me if I say I get nervous, but I tend to practice constantly to show a balanced performance.

Singing Flower of Scotland was the only thing that made me nervous.I don't get nervous doing my own shows.

I'm still finding my feet in many ways as a performer. I'm not an extrovert, and certainly the attention isn't what drew me to it, and I find that quite jarring at times. I used to stress a lot about shows and get palpitations before shows, but eventually you learn to love it, and it is a thrill.

Everyone will clearly be a bit nervous and scared before going onstage. But what I do is just remember that this is my passion. Once I get on the stage and see everyone smiling and looking at me, the joy that it brings to me makes me forget all about my nerves.

If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

I think everyone's afraid of public speaking. There have been times where I've come out of my own show and been like, 'Oh, God, what am I doing?' . . . You have to remind yourself that 'OK, I'm kind of a badass. I can handle it.'

I don't feel pressure going into games.

It feels like the more I'm out there in the public eye, the more criticism I get. You need to have confidence - that's what it takes to walk out there and sing a song in front of a huge group of people.

I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show.

I used to get nervous, you know if my parents would come watch. And then I would get nervous if my friends came and watched. Today it's not a problem anymore actually, because now I enjoy it. I see that they, you know, respect me immensely, and I try to put on a good show and show that I can still play very good tennis.