Gareth Gates Quotes

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17.

I'm not great at small talk.

I had a bad stutter when I was really young. I couldn't get a sentence out. Like, 'D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.' And that turned into a mumble.

I was never one to go up to someone as a five- or six-year-old and say, 'Hello, my name's Paul, will you be my friend?' But I found if I did an impression of the PE teacher or whatever and people laughed, then they did like me, and so then they started talking to me, rather than me making the initial overture and then maybe being rebuffed.

I like talking. I didn't know at the time I would have to worry so much about my hair.

People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.

Speech and having a stammer is obviously a big part of my life.

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can't control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I'm just not going to go outside the house. I'm going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier.

There is nothing more fearful for the average person in our society than to stand before a group of people and speak.

I found I could perform in front of 200 people, but I would still feel nervous having a one-on-one conversation.

Not only am I a shy person, I take a little while to say what I mean, especially in a social situation, and usually those move too fast for me to say anything at all.

I don't talk in front of people.

A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer.

I can interact with anybody, but I'm shy.

I grew up really timid, anxious kid, and I never really had to stand up for myself.

I was not happy with myself as a human being when I was very young - I was afraid of people; I was afraid of talking, I didn't know how to express myself other than by being on stage.

You have to learn how to dress yourself and how to walk into a room and talk to people. Once you're in rehearsal, you have to know how to rehearse and how to communicate with your creatives, even if you don't communicate the same way.

I was a shy child. I had anxiety. I used to cry when I had to give a presentation.

When you've grown up always knowing that there's something that seemed to be different about you from most people - and not being able to understand until my mid-forties that what we were talking about here was autism - I've had to learn an awful let about myself and what I can and can't do and what I can or can't cope with.

I'm a small-town kid from Winnsboro, La., who grew up not really being comfortable talking to people.

I have a tendency to trail off in conversations. I don't look up at people sometimes when I talk or cook, and those are all pretty bad no-no's being in front of the camera.

I am, by nature, pretty reserved. It was after I became an actor that I started interacting more with people from different walks of life!

There's a social element of me that's pretty reserved. High school was when I was starting to come out of my shell because of the theater community.

I get nervous all the time. The only time I'm not nervous is onstage, which is weird.