David Johansen Quotes

I soon realized that the best thing I could do for the profession of human services was to get out of it.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

A lot of times, I put my own personal health to the side, focusing on work or family or getting ahead. At the end of the day, you're just exhausted on your couch and haven't made that doctor's appointment, didn't make that phone call, and feel terrible.

I think the stress will kill me. I think it will be the stress.

I'm just trying to normalize my life and get ready for the last 20 years or whatever I've got. It's a lot to take care of.

My shrink said to me once when I used to get really overwhelmed and super depressed because I was really run down between kids and the company and there was just so much going on - she said, 'You know, you have to look after you in order for you to look after everybody else.'

I'm getting older, turning 40 this year. I had a period where I thought each expedition had to be something harder, something faster. But you can't go on like that, or you're going to die.

The truth is, if we abuse ourselves with too much work and too little play, our body is eventually going to fight back, and the results can be terrible.

Everything that these folks are saying that they're trying to move away from, like comparison, perfectionism, judgement, and exhaustion as a status symbol - that all describes my life. It was more like a medical researcher studying a disease and figuring out he or she has it.

I have written too much about lives - I feel I have lived for too long.

Growing up sucks, doesn't it? I understand why people wouldn't want to get old - but it'd be one thing if we became a culture obsessed with eating right, doing yoga, going to therapy and becoming at one with ourselves. That be great. But we don't do that. We seem to be obsessed with all the wrong ways to stay young.

The toughest part was doing it in front of the world and recognizing that you had gotten to a point where if you didn't do something you were going to die.

I think that in the last four or five years I've constantly struggled with the balance in my life.

If the relentless personal maintenance plan has taken over your life, give it a rest.

I've had to learn how to say no to things, and have people around me that don't push me too hard, because I'll go until I just crash. I don't have a stop button.

I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I'm getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I'm just trying not to get into that sort of state again.

I am on sabbatical as of right now, been too busy to think of about my OWN needs as of late.

Googling me, you talk about being depressed. First of all there's 18 websites that predict my early death.

I'm still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

You really have to try hard to create space and, at least for a time, stop the political world from rushing in. The important thing is to remain sane.

The students realize that it's their life I'm talking about: it's out of balance, they're struggling to put it into balance. How are they going to do it?

My whole life was writing, recording and touring over and over again. At some point I realised I wasn't enjoying myself any more.

I learned that I was just getting too consumed by racing. That's all I used to do was think about it. You have to be able to turn it off. You have to make yourself stop, or you'll get burned out.

It's a nonstop schedule, really. I had lost myself somewhere.

My personal life, my normal life, is so important to me. To be able to go back to my personal life and leave characters behind is important; I don't keep them with me.