Creative Burnout Quotes

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

There's nothing that could get me interested in Hollywood again. And, increasingly, there's nothing that could get me interested in the American comics industry again.

After 12 intense years of rock music, I was happy to get away from making a record and going out on a tour. When I did it, I wanted to feel inspired. After a while I finally had my fill working on other people's music, and I started coming up with music on my own and said, 'This could be for me.'

I'm trying everything I can not to be jaded 'cause I don't like jaded musicians.

Many talents hurt themselves by over thinking the business and doing too much which waters every thing down and makes major moves mean less.

I have friends who died being successful bohemians. Today, I see people my age who are gifted but who insisted on staying in this group, and it's beaten them so bad. They have to spend so much time on ego maintenance, they can't get any work done. They'd be very happy to sell out, but there are no buyers, and that hurts.

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.

After 1999, I thought that I needed a break. As a senior composer, I didn't like the trend of three music directors working on a single film. But after a few quiet years, I was back for good.

After three straight years of writing, though, I definitely needed a break to just go live my life.

I'm not Superman. Eventually, the grind gets to you. If you're away from your friends, you're not traveling with anyone you like, and you're doing stuff that doesn't creatively stimulate you, that's when it becomes a job.

Writing used to be my hobby, but now that it's my job, I have no hobby - except watching TV and laying around the pool reading 'U.S. Weekly.' I have tried many hobbies, such as knitting, Pilates, ballet, yoga, and guitar, but none of them have taken.

I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.

I know a lot of artists and chefs don't talk about this, but sometimes you just don't get to the finish line. That honesty and tenderness is something we're kind of not supposed to express.

I've written some great things. That's a gift, but there's consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

I think all comics borrow from each other. Only a few have an original voice, and I wasn't one of them. In the end, I couldn't figure out who to steal from, so I stopped doing it.

I wouldn't have been in the mind-set to do another 'Fly.'

Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.

Being an actress isn't as fun as it may seem. If I don't love something, I stop doing it. I don't love acting anymore, so I've stopped doing it.

It's one thing to have forced time off as an actor, and another thing when you actually say, 'I don't want to read anything, and I don't want to talk to anybody.'

Television? It's a gateway to writer's block, isn't it?

Your brain is cooked when you write hard for three or four hours.

You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.

I am the worlds laziest writer.

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness.

After 'Frampton Comes Alive!' became a huge success, I really needed to take time off to work out what the hell just happened. Instead, I just kept working.