Career Burnout Quotes

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

I never contemplated any kind of existence or identity after my career. I never thought at some point the entertainment industry is going to be through with me. And when it first occurred to me that my career was going to cease to be ascendant, then I freaked out.

I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt.

I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head...

I'm sure most actors, after a while, get a bit jaded.

I think, at some point in my wrestling career, I took myself way too seriously, and I took the wrestling business way too seriously. It probably helped sour me on the whole process. It probably helped burn me out.

As an actor, you get hired to repeat yourself. It wears you out.

I spent 15 years on the road between touring and recording and I never saw anything. I want to enjoy life.

The great disadvantage of being in a rat race is that it is humiliating. The competitors in a rat race are by definition rodents.

As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.

I dropped the script in the fireplace, called my agent and said, they can jail me, sue me, but I'm never acting again, unless I can do something worthwhile.

In all honesty, I hope I don't coach again.

When I was working actively, I used to be in the studios for 12 hours. I didn't have any time for my family.

When the joy of the job's gone, when it's no fun trying anymore, quit before you're fired.

I've had to change careers several times. Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burned beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money. And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.

I watch actors destroy themselves by trying to get it right.

I am a recovering rat racer.

I don't care if I never do another TV show in my life.

For the first ten years of my career, I felt suffocated. People constantly stood over me while I tried to create. And in 2009, I hit rock bottom. I couldn't find myself because I was looking to be defined by the music industry or by being number one on the Billboard charts.

I love my job - I'm going to keep doing it until I die - but there's nothing more soul-destroying than having to cancel a show.

I was thinking that work is like fertilizer in that I'm glad it exists; I just don't ever want to get stuck in it.

I think WCW will kill any kind of joy in your life. I think I started hating money. The money they paid me was insane, but I would be off and fly first-class airplane, luxury cars and hotels, and then arrive at the arena and have Eric Bischoff tell you 5-10 minutes after 6 P.M. that you are off tonight.

My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.

I was tired of just kind of being on that express train, whatever you want to call it, so to speak. It just sort of shoots forward, and you have no creative autonomy, no control over your time, and there's not much time for side projects or family and friends.