Avoidance Behaviour Quotes

For a while, I didn't want to leave the house. Eventually, I just got sick of being indoors. Now I take steps not to be noticed when I don't want to be. For instance, I live near Westfield shopping centre, so I won't go there at the weekend.

I have stopped going out places just to avoid uncomfortable conversations.

I have social anxiety. It's easier up on stage because there's security in being there. When I'm off stage I'm trying not to be a manic freak. I'm quite shy.

I really hate being recognised. I'm quite a shy person, and I'm not very good at talking to strangers. So when people come up to me in the street, I just find it quite awkward. I don't really know what to say to them.

I did not love going out to parties or even get-togethers, really - I went to the movies, which, if you think about it, is an isolating experience anyway - and this was because I had anxiety about interacting with people.

I don't like to be noticed. The older I've got, the more reclusive I've become. I've got late-onset shyness. People are lovely. When they see me in the street, they don't ask for anything from me. They just say: 'I thought it was you, and I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your books,' but I can't seem to cope with it anymore.

I don't know if it's irrational, and I would never say this before, but I think I'm a little bit agoraphobic when I'm in huge crowds of people. I mean, it's claustrophobic, probably - small spaces and large groups of people, anxiety rises for me.

I became very timid, very retreating. I wouldn't talk to anybody. I didn't look you in the eye. I just had that kind of personality as a kid that basically puts a target on you.

I blush easily. I have difficulty meeting people's eye, difficulty with public speaking, the normal afflictions of the shy, but not to a paralysing degree.

I wasn't into anything at school. I used to get really embarrassed. I used to get asked to do performing things, and I'd go to all the rehearsals, and then I'd pretend to be ill on the day I had to actually perform. I was very unhappy at school.

I still find trusting people quite hard. I've got a couple of mates that I do let in, but that's it. It's something I've got to sort out - I cut people off.

There was about two years where I was more or less agoraphobic and didn't deal with anybody, didn't talk to anybody, didn't have any friends at all.

I was once so terrified of acting that I used to pretend I was ill to get out of drama.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

Sometimes I don't want to stand around a room full of strangers, chitchatting about nothing, so I'll come late to a party - and leave early. Though now that I'm saying this in a magazine, I'll probably never be invited to another one.

I started studying shyness in adults in 1972. Shyness operates at so many different levels. Out of that research came the Stanford shyness clinic in 1977.

A person who suffers from severe locomotor anxiety finds himself in an almost permanent state of mental tension. He wakes in the morning with the anxious expectation of having to go out somewhere in the course of the day.

I have no physical genius about me. I can't dribble a ball and run at the same time, I can't do lay-ups - I'm not an athlete. But my experience as a kid was, I was made fun of so much that what I did then, is, I wouldn't participate. And I think I cheated myself out of a lot of fun.

I don't go to the mall a lot 'cause girls scream and run at me, and I get shy.

Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave.

I used to have a really hard time talking to people or looking them in the eye. Or I'd always, like, hide behind my mom, and, like, when we went to restaurants, I didn't like ordering my food. I'd have my mom order it because I didn't like talking to the waiters.

If you see a gaggle of teenagers walking towards you, you tend not to make eye contact, because you know they're going to recognise you. You learn to adapt: 99.999 per cent of people aren't looking to be harmful or unpleasant; they just want something, a photograph or an autograph.

I'm basically a fearful person. I'm a phobic person.

I was almost tragically shy, like, clinically. I should've been admitted somewhere. I think my parents knew, but maybe they didn't think much about it. It's hard walking the Earth shy. You miss out on a lot.

I'm that person: I will literally do everything to not get out of bed, so I have alarms set for every 15 minutes.