I was born in a tiny little enclave of terrified Jewish refugees, less than half a million of them, with no clear perspective of a future – hopes, yes, but no clear perspective.
When I was in China, Mao was Chairman, and parents were terrified to tell their children anything that differed from the party line in case the children repeated it and endangered the whole family.
I want to talk about my very first play, when I was in eighth grade. One day, my English teacher, Mrs. Baker, announced that we were going to read ‘On Borrowed Time’ out loud in class. I was a mediocre student; I was terrified that she was going to call on me, so I hid my head.
I was terrified about people knowing I was gay. I’d cringe inside at the idea that they’d be talking behind my back.
In many countries, women aren’t jubilant when they learn they are pregnant. Quite the opposite – they’re terrified.
The gay people I knew in real life were soft spoken and didn’t want to call attention to themselves because they were terrified of exposing themselves, of people finding out that they’re gay.
I’m really honestly terrified about how much I should tell and how much I should still keep secret.
I am terrified of being misjudged by thousands of faceless Twitterers.
I was terrified. My first week, walking around in a teeny bikini, I kept crossing my arms over my chest because I was afraid I was going to fall out of the top of the suit. And I didn’t know anything about technique or lighting.
I’ve never given a speech without being terrified first.
I actually had an experience where I thought somebody was breaking into my house. That’s got to be the most terrified I’ve ever been in my life. I don’t know if that’s saying much. The fear, especially as a female in a house by yourself, was horrible.
I used to be terrified of heights as a kid.
I’m terrified about the world food shortages. Vegetables could quite easily become tomorrow’s currency.
When I started on ‘Strictly,’ I was terrified. Live television seemed like the most daunting thing in the world.
Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.
I’m intimidated every day I go on the stage and everyday I go on a movie set. It’s terrifying and I always want to reshoot the first day or the first week, I’m so terrified.
When I was 34, I went and had my eggs harvested. Looking back, I was like, ‘It was easy,’ but it wasn’t that easy. It’s a lot of medication, a lot of hormones. You have to inject yourself in the stomach and I’m so terrified of needles! It was a difficult thing for me to do.
When I started out, I was very shy, I was terrified of meeting strangers and I hated the lime-light.
I could bear being in the charts and being on everyone’s car radio 10 times a day. I’m just terrified of… a lot of people I respect have done it with a real little ‘ditty’ and that was the end of it – that was all they were ever known for.
Ive always been one of those comics who doesnt say much on panel shows because Im terrified of saying the wrong thing or offending the wrong person.
My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read ‘Reader’s Digest’, listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.
I think with performing, initially I was terrified on stage, absolutely terrified. And I did it again and again and again, and I learned sort of how it works, and then I was able to do it.
If David Duke got the percentage of the vote that Le Pen got, we would be terrified, as well we should be.
My movies are, more or less, very short. I’m terrified of boring an audience.
I’m just a perpetually confused and terrified person that is trying to be less so all the time, and music is the byproduct of that.
Even if you’re an optimist, there’s some part of you that just tries to toughen up and be pragmatic and go, ‘This isn’t gonna happen. This isn’t gonna happen.’ I really felt that way through the process of ‘Korra’ because I knew ‘Avatar,’ and I knew how wonderful it was, and I was so terrified.
I was so terrified before an audience that I would break out in these ugly red hives, and my lips would quiver at the sight of a word or a song.
Like many black men growing up in London, I have been stopped and searched by several policemen. I was 12 years old when I was first groped and frisked by police for walking down the road. It terrified me so much I wet myself.
The mere thought of divorce terrified me. To me, divorce symbolized failure.
Music helped me to get out of a rough period in my life when I really struggled to see any future for myself and was terrified about what was happening to the people around me.
All of my friends are like, ‘Look at me when I was a little kid. I was so cute!’ and it’s a picture of them in a tutu. I’m so terrified to show them my pictures, because it’s me in boy shorts and a ponytail and my brother’s shirt.
Confronted by a skilled examiner, Trump would melt down in minutes. He’d be humiliated, and he knows it – which is why he’s too terrified to give testimony under oath, and why it won’t happen.
Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.
The very first Walnut Whales recording was recorded just a few weeks after I had started singing, out of the blue, started singing. And the voice, you can hear how uncomfortable I am with it, and how terrified I am with it.
I was terrified of vault, like literally I hated it. I had a fear of running as fast as I could at a solid object, which is I think a normal fear to have because nobody would really want to do that. Once I got over the fear of running into the table I just kind of relaxed and now it’s like autopilot. I love it.
People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal – which was only two days after sealing the book deal – but I was really quite terrified.
I went to see a children’s matinee at the movie theatre one summer, but at some point they had changed to the grown up movie in the late afternoon, and I ended up seeing this movie called ‘The Bad Seed.’ It just terrified me.
Showing a videogame character terrified and scared is something that’s not really done that much.
As with real families, my fictional family on ‘Life Goes On’ had its ups and downs, and as part of the fictional downers, the actors were often called to cry on cue. This absolutely terrified me, because I was a pretty happy kid who didn’t have much to cry about.
It’s funny to look back – Tessa was seven and I was nine. I remember there wasn’t a lot of talking at the beginning. We were terrified to hold hands for quite a while.
I almost exclusively wear skinny jeans. I’m terrified of any other cut of denim.
When I was sixteen I was terrified and I vowed never to surf waves over ten feet tall.
We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!
Bent Literary Agency had a Q&A on Twitter, and I took a chance and asked if the Black Lives Matter movement was an appropriate topic for a YA novel. Brooks Sherman, who is now my agent, responded that he didn’t think any topics were inappropriate for YA. I remember being so terrified even just sending the tweet.
I’m really grateful to my parents for having the confidence in me to let me go. I was terrified I might have to slink back to the village with my tail between my legs, and treated every job as though it were my last – I still do – but fortunately, I got work and things seemed to slot into place.
I went to my first drum n’ bass rave when I was 16 and remember being terrified. Looking around, trying to figure out how to dance to this music, watching some girl in some hot pants, trying little ways to learn her movements.
Gone are the days when the upper classes were terrified of the angry mob wanting to smash their skulls and confiscate their properties. Now their biggest enemy is the army of lazy bums, whose lifestyle of indolence and hedonism, financed by crippling taxes on the rich, is sucking the lifeblood out of the economy.
When everybody fought Anderson Silva in the past, they were terrified of him. Absolutely terrified. That’s part of the reason why he was so successful.
We are witnessing a very slow and painful cultural shift. Some male gamers with a deep sense of entitlement are terrified of change. They believe games should continue to cater exclusively to young heterosexual men with ever more extreme virtual power fantasies.
We blush very, very easily, and we get terrified of audiences.
I’d love to do a comedy. I’m terrified of comedy. I don’t think I’m funny, but I guess that’s why it’s so thrilling.
When I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called ‘extreme’ shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I’m terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice.
