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Creativity Quote by Sheryl Crow

"There's so much of it you can't control. There is no handbook for how to conduct yourself in the public world"

About this Quote

Fame, in Crow's framing, isn't a spotlight you step into so much as a weather system you get caught in. The line lands because it refuses the glamorous mythology of celebrity as pure agency. "There's so much of it you can't control" reads like a quiet rebuttal to the culture's favorite accusation: that public figures "asked for it" and should therefore perform gratitude on command. Crow is naming the gap between a private self and the public avatar that gets traded, judged, memed, and moralized.

The second sentence sharpens the point with a deceptively simple metaphor: "There is no handbook". It's an admission of improvisation, but also a critique of how spectators act as if there were a rulebook everyone agreed to. We demand perfect statements, flawless timing, airtight politics, and just the right amount of vulnerability, then punish the inevitable missteps as character flaws rather than structural hazards. Crow's phrasing suggests that the "public world" is not a neutral stage; it's an arena with shifting rules written by tabloids, fans, executives, and now algorithms.

As a musician who came up in the pre-social-media era and has lived through the churn of constant commentary, Crow is also gesturing at an escalation: the public sphere has gotten noisier, faster, and more personal. The quote's power is its plainness. No martyrdom, no diva theatrics - just a clear-eyed reminder that visibility is not the same thing as control, and that the costs of being watched are rarely itemized up front.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Crow, Sheryl. (2026, January 16). There's so much of it you can't control. There is no handbook for how to conduct yourself in the public world. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-so-much-of-it-you-cant-control-there-is-no-98890/

Chicago Style
Crow, Sheryl. "There's so much of it you can't control. There is no handbook for how to conduct yourself in the public world." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-so-much-of-it-you-cant-control-there-is-no-98890/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"There's so much of it you can't control. There is no handbook for how to conduct yourself in the public world." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/theres-so-much-of-it-you-cant-control-there-is-no-98890/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow (born February 11, 1962) is a Musician from USA.

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