Jill Scott Quotes

The hiatus you spoke about happened in 1998. I was somewhat numb from being out on the road every night. I had to stop because I was emotionally and physically drained.

When I look back to when I had my first son, I was unhappy. I couldn't understand why the weight wasn't just falling off.

New motherhood is such a vulnerable and powerful time, but it's also really hard.

Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.

With a new baby, you have a bad day now and again because you're particularly tired, but most of the time, you're fine. You spend a lot of your time trying to figure out how you can get more sleep, but really, you're better off just giving up and admitting that you're not going to, so forget about it.

Everyone says, 'You give birth, you go home, and you have this amazing baby and it's just beautiful'. And I walked in and I just started sobbing.

Single parenting is sometimes just a case of sitting around by yourself in mild despair, not knowing what to do.

People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.

Seven years without a break really takes a toll on you, and you don't even realize it. You're affected by other people, and after a while, sometimes they have love for you, and sometimes they don't.

Postpartum depression is a very real and very serious problem for many mothers. It can happen to a first time mom or a veteran mother. It can occur a few days... or a few months after childbirth.

Feeling alone while you're going through something actually exacerbates the symptoms of it.

As a single parent, it can really be tough if the father's not in the picture much. Physically, emotionally and financially, you are trying to be there for your child and it can really get on top of you.

'You're not alone' can be a great thing to hear when you're feeling quite despondent and alienated from the world and yourself. But if you're someone who's been completely overwrought with the intensity of life and the world, getting some space to be alone can be one of the things you crave most.

Everyone told me to sleep when the baby sleeps, but she sleeps during the daytime, and that's when I have to get stuff done! I've been a zombie.

Alone, she took hot baths and sat exhausted in the steaming water, wondering at her perpetual exhaustion. All that winter she noticed the limp, languid weight of her arms, her veins bulging slightly with the pressure of her extreme weariness ... one day in January she drew a razor blade lightly across the inside of her arm, near the elbow, to see what would happen.

This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!

I've not been able to avoid periods of time where I felt super-lonely. Luckily, I have a side that is able to always see the glass as half-full.

I'd rather be alone than unhappy

I had to be alone for a little while, but I'm okay now." "All right. But next time, don't go where I can't find you.

In dealing with those who are undergoing great suffering, if you feel "burnout" setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best, for the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself. The point is to have a long-term perspective.

I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a missing Portuguese criminal and your friends don't want to be your friend anymore, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime, where at least all the women are treated like social outcasts. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to quietly read a book all weekend and listen to classical music.

This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you.

They rise in the morning, and they sleep in the dark. And even though nobody's looking, she's falling apart.

These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.

The only way I can cope with me and my environment is to have this kind of wall around me. I'm exhausting myself.