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Creativity Quote by Stevie Nicks

"If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?"

About this Quote

Stage fright, in Stevie Nicks's telling, isn't a bug in the system; it's the system. The first sentence refuses the tidy myth of the veteran performer who "gets over it". Instead, she normalizes fear as a permanent roommate, not a temporary obstacle. Coming from an artist whose stage persona reads as otherworldly - shawls, symbols, myth-making - the admission lands with a bracing intimacy. It punctures the illusion that charisma is confidence and replaces it with something more believable: professionalism under pressure.

The pivot - "But then I wonder" - is where the quote starts doing real cultural work. Nicks isn't romanticizing anxiety as some divine gift; she's asking a pragmatic question about craft. Fear becomes fuel, a live wire that keeps the performance alert. Onstage, a little terror sharpens attention: you listen harder, you commit more fully, you don't coast. "Magical" here isn't woo-woo; it's the audience's experience of risk. People can sense when something could fail, and that edge is part of what reads as alchemy.

There's also a feminist subtext in her refusal to claim effortless mastery. Rock history loves the swaggering genius. Nicks offers a different model: the iconic woman who admits vulnerability without surrendering power. In a culture that asks performers to be both perfect and unbothered, she frames fear as evidence that the stakes are real - that the song, the crowd, the moment still matter.

Quote Details

TopicFear
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Nicks, Stevie. (2026, January 15). If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear? FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-have-stage-fright-it-never-goes-away-but-159735/

Chicago Style
Nicks, Stevie. "If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?" FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-have-stage-fright-it-never-goes-away-but-159735/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?" FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-have-stage-fright-it-never-goes-away-but-159735/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.

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Stevie Nicks on Stage Fright and Performance Magic
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About the Author

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Stevie Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is a Musician from USA.

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