Fame is very heavy. When there are large crowds, I'm unable to handle it.
If I went to somewhere busy, I wouldn't last very long. I can't go to a museum - I'll last 10 or 15 minutes in a museum. The problem is that when one person asks for a photograph, then someone sees a flash goes off, then everyone else sort of... it's sort of like a domino effect.
I don't like going out where it's really, really crowded.
I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there's more people in the audience than I'm used to.
A couple hundred people around, and I'm shaking.
I hate going out and being in crowds or being in clubs. I can't deal with it, and I don't like it; I've never liked it.
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 used to get a sort of sociophobia, and I still get it sometimes these days when I'm in a confined space with too many people. It's not like I freak out or anything, it's just that I'm far more comfortable in my own company sometimes than being surrounded by one thousand strangers.
I'm too scared to perform onstage. I'm not very good with big crowds.
The bigger the crowds get, the more nervous I get. I actually am very comfortable with a half-filled room of people who are slightly disinterested and are irritated at a Barnes & Noble.
When I read that nobody should ever feel ashamed to be alone or to be in a crowd, I realized that I often felt ashamed of both of those things.
I'm not very good in crowds, so I usually try to become as small as possible.
Whenever I have to do anything fan-related there's always a whole bunch of people. My brain kind of shuts down when there are loads of people screaming at me. I'm not thinking at all so I can't really remember what's happened immediately afterwards.
Crowds are the most difficult thing for me these days because I have to walk with my head down and my eyes averted. There's still that part of me that wants to hold my head up, make eye contact and smile.
I'm a little more shy and not comfortable dancing in front of a large crowd.
I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.
I'm a lot more comfortable on the field than I am talking in front of a crowd.
If the crowd is too big, it's too much for me. I took my daughter down there, and all I did was spend all of my time worrying that she was going to get lost because you're caught between somebody with a sandwich in their hand and somebody in a costume. It's really crazy.
In the holy solipsism of the young Now I can't walk thru a city street w/out eying each single pedestrian. I feel thier vibe thru my skin, the hair on my neck --- it rises.
I was with my mother at a mall when our car was suddenly surrounded by people. Initially, she loved seeing her son getting mobbed. Then the crowds started swelling, and they began to push and shove and tilt the car. My mom's joy turned into anxiety.
I love people; don't get me wrong. Individually, I love that interaction between people, and I'm not an ogre or something; but huge crowds of people, huge groups of people who seemingly have endless access to you - as I get older, I'm not really into that.
A mall was something that I just used to hang out in as a kid. And then you go there, and there's 4,000 people waiting for you to perform. It's a big difference.
I have never experienced anything like walking out onto the stage of an oversold venue and, before the first note is struck, realizing that there is not going to be enough oxygen for all of us.
Flying isn't great for me - or getting caught in a crowd.
I'd been invited to deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2017 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Speaking live on television is one thing... speaking to 30,000 people in a football stadium is another.
