J K Rowling on Burnout Quotes

"I felt that I was a walking disaster. I felt that I was failing at everything."

"I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive."

"I directed all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me."

"I had to rebuild myself piece by piece, starting with the smallest habits."

"I felt I had to keep running just to stay in the same place. That is when the joy leaves."

"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

"The discipline of finishing is what separates the dreamers from the writers, but the discipline of resting is what keeps the writers alive."

"The hardest thing is the expectation. You feel you are letting people down if you aren't perfect."

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was."

"Depression is that cold absence of feeling—that really hollowed-out feeling. That's what the Dementors are."

"I reached a point where I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had to build the light myself."

"I had to learn to say no to things that were taking me away from the only work that mattered."

"Mental health is just as important as physical health, and we must treat it with the same urgency."

"The fear of success is just as exhausting as the fear of failure."

"I had a sense of being under a microscope, and it makes you want to hide."

"Success brings its own kind of exhaustion. You are suddenly public property."

"I think the Dementors are the most unpleasant things I've ever written. They are a description of depression."

"You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default."

"Rest is not a luxury, it is a necessity for survival in a world that never stops."

"I found that I was losing my joy in the process of creation because of the pressure of delivery."

"The world doesn't stop because you are tired, but you must learn when to stop for the world."

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive."

"I had to remind myself why I started in the first place—to tell a story, not to win a race."

"I was very, very tired for a long time. It wasn't just physical; it was a soul-tiredness."

"I don't believe in the 'tortured artist' myth, but I do believe in the exhausted one."

"Writing was my way of coping with the world, but eventually, I needed the world to stop so I could just write."

"Reclaiming your time is the first step to recovery from the weight of the world."

"There is a period where you just have to stop. You have to admit that you are human."

"Give yourself permission to be human and to be messy."

"You have to protect your creative space with a ferocity that people might find rude."

"I was very aware that I was burning the candle at both ends, and the candle was getting very short."