Burned Out Quotes

In the old days, Christmas lights had come in short strings that were wired serially. If a single bulb burned out or even just loosened in its socket, the circuit was broken and the entire string went dark. One of the season's rituals for Gary and Chip had been to tighten each little brass-footed bulb in a darkened string and then, if this didn't work, to replace each bulb in turn until the dead culprit was found. (What joy the boys had taken in the resurrection of a string!) By the time Denise was old enough to help with the lights, the technology had advanced. The wiring was parallel, and the bulbs had snap-in plastic bases. A single faulty light didn't affect the rest of the community but identified itself instantly for instant replacement ... ~ Jonathan Franzen

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. ~ Anonymous

I was a very good nurse, but I burned out after eight years or so because it wasn't what I truly wanted to do. Writing is what I belong to. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

The neighborhood homeowners always knew when she ran by, because they suddenly felt the desire to organize their sock drawers and finally replace those burned out light-bulbs they'd been meaning to. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

At that point, one of two things usually happens. Either we blame the client or we blame ourselves. The first gives rise to a terrible therapist; the second, a soon-to-be burned out, a.k.a. former, therapist. ~ Linda Curran

If you can kill it in the bedroom, chances are you can kill it in the kitchen, too - and studies have shown that men who help out more with the chores have more sex with their wives (really!). We know, gender roles run deep, which is why women in hetero relationships still end up doing the vast majority of the domestic work despite being the breadwinners in two-thirds of American homes, leaving them burned out, resentful, and, nope, not really in the mood. But it doesn't have to be this way - and, in fact, we might want to borrow a page from our LGBTQ sisters and brothers (or those who identify as neither): research shows they split chores, decisions, and finances more evenly ~ Jessica Bennett

Maybe you'll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup
thin, strong, translucent?" He held his cup to the light. " All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that
more fire. And then either the slag heap or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection." He drained his cup and he said loudly, "Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us
would stop trying? ~ John Steinbeck

My evolution as a violinist has included many thrilling performances, and I still love what I do, but there are times when even I get burned out. When this happens, I go back to that moment ten years ago. I picture myself on the stage with my bow in the air. I feel my heart racing, I see the faces in the audience smiling, and I remember the moment I thought, "I have to make this my life. ~ Lindsey Stirling

Really, you want to have variety as an actor. If you spend your career doing one thing solidly, people get burned out. ~ Julianne Moore

I am starting to accept
that you never loved me.
And it's sad
because I don't think you see
how beautiful you are to me.
Your face was the light
that chased away the shadows,
every nightmare, every fear.
But you burned out and now
I'm learning to be afraid
of the dark once again. ~ Sade Andria Zabala

Prior to that I produced a couple of TV movies for CBS, but the truth of the matter is that I burned out for a couple of years. I didn't do anything for a while, apart from taking up golf, for which I got a four handicap. ~ Gil Gerard

Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life. ~ Roz Kaveney

Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn. ~ Edmund Burke

What we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait
Till the want has burned out of our brains,
Every means shall be present to state;
While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late-too late. ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

My shame circuits burned out from overuse years ago. ~ David Wong

Love, our love, had been a shooting star, burning in the darkness, unseen until it got too close, too bright and too quick to capture. It burned out, lost to the deep cold and darkness, to the brutality of space, the infinity above us and in the new emptiness inside of me. ~ Karina Halle

Sometimes I can't look you in the eye; you're like a building that's burned out inside, with the outer wall still standing. ~ Anne Michaels

A fourteen-year-old lad crouching with his bazooka behind a ruined wall on a burned out street is worth more to the nation than ten intellectuals who attempt to prove that our chances now are nil. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Lightning rods guarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps of burned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happy cemetery. ~ Harper Lee

Could it be that first love was the only true love? And that after those first fires had been doused or burned out, men and women chose whom they would love based on worldly needs, and then reenacted the rituals and feelings of that first pure experience - nursed the flames that once burned of their own accord ... ~ Simon Van Booy

One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

To much has happened too fast Dear Diary. What I want is for nothing to happen at all.
I don't even want good things anymore. I just want nothing. ~ Lee Smith

A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse. ~ Thomas More

The world around her, the straight world, the mundane world, had become to her a blowing wasteland. It was empty, a postapocalyptic world: empty stores, empty houses, stalled cars with the upholstery burned out of them, dead traffic lights swaying above empty streets. That missing afternoon in November had become a black hole that had sucked the entire rest of her life into it. And once you'd fallen past that Schwarzschild radius, it was pretty damn hard to claw your way back out again. ~ Lev Grossman

The stars we see in the night sky are so far away that it takes years for us to see it when they die. I can't help but wonder if Kyra had burned out long before I left - and if we simply hadn't seen it. ~ Marieke Nijkamp

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. ~ Tony Stewart

When I do stand-up for a long time, I'll get burned out, then I'll get an acting gig. For me, the grass is always greener. I'd like to do a mixture of all of it. My goal is just to do small movies that I've written. That's what I'm trying to do now, just write smaller movies. ~ Zach Galifianakis

Being burned out is a lot better than having no fire in the fist place. ~ Scott Ginsberg

It is better to burn out then fade away ~ Neil Young

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes,
blown out on the trail; hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn,
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya shelter from the storm." ~ Bob Dylan

When you have to work with and exist amongst cynical, burned-out personnel on a set, it doesn't matter what you're shooting or how much you're being paid - it's not worth it. ~ Henry Rollins

I was burned out. I think I was just exhausted. It was a very intense five years. We didn't stop. It was constant touring, constant writing, recording. ~ Roger Andrew Taylor

The candle flickered in the wind of the hurricane... Then, the light of one hundred billion stars burned out. ~ Stephen Chbosky

I loved county fairs in the South. It was hard to believe that anything could be so consistently cheap and showy and vulgar year after year. each year I thought that at least one class act would force its way into a booth or sideshow, but I was always mistaken. The lure of the fair was the perfect harmony of its joyous decadence, its burned-out dishonored vulgarity, its riot of colors and smells, its jangling, tawdry music, and its wicked glimpse into the outlaw life of hucksters, tattoo parlors, monstrous freaks, and strippers. ~ Pat Conroy

For years the league has thought I've been on drugs. I would have burned out a long time ago if that was true. ~ Dennis Rodman

She had to think about the future, her mother said. Marriage. She was sixteen now. It was time. The word made her sick to her stomach. She watched the other girls her age, braiding flowers into their hair, pinching their cheeks, smiling shyly or picking up their skirts and dancing, showing off their knees for the boys. Competing over who would live with whom in which dark hovel, who would spend their lives plowing which burned out field, making which grey stew in which sad hearth, having her hair torn out by which man, dying of which plague or beating or wretched childbirth...and she thought she'd rather die. She'd rather be dead. ~ Kimberly Cutter

So, after three days of incessant brandy-drinking, he had burned out the youth from his blood, he had achieved this kindled state of oneness with all the world, which is the end of youth's most passionate desire. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Here's the beauty of a camera: you don't have to come up with words for what you're looking at ... Maybe another angle is needed sometimes. When we're burned out from writing, we can photograph or draw, look at the world in a different way, and photographers could try writing what they see. ~ Barbara Abercrombie

I was pretty burned out in '85 and was getting - starting to get into some issues. ~ Rick Springfield

There is nothing like that for the boys who did not go to war; they were not soldiers, and did not die. They are burned out of history, for nothing blazes quite as hot as shame. There are no bills in circulation. But I have signed their names to this story. I have signed all of our names.
How else will we be remembered? ~ Andrew Sean Greer

Men like him, the kind of guys who left the womb fighting? They didn't get fairy-tale endings. They burned bright until they burned out - and he was burning out. ~ Tonya Burrows

I'm alone. And I'm crying. And no one is coming to the crib. And the nightlight has burned out. And I'm mad. I'm so mad. Left frontal lobe. I ... I ... I don't feel so good. Left occipital lobe. I ... don't remember where ... Left parietal lobe. I ... I ... I can't remember my name,but ... but ... Right temporal ... but I'm still here. Right frontal. I'm still here ... Right occipital.I'm still ... Right parietal. I'm ... Cerebellum. I'm ... Thalamus. I ... Hypothalamus. I ... Hippocampus ... Medulla ... ~ Neal Shusterman

I came to teaching late - not until my forties - which is one reason why I'm not burned out. ~ Alison Hawthorne Deming

I was very burned out after Buffy. It was exhausting. It took me from essentially 18 on the pilot to being 24 and married when we finished. That show was my life. I was doing movies on the hiatuses and on weekends, but I needed to explore and live that gypsy lifestyle. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

However it might go, I should have no regrets. If I should be reduced to begging in the street, then I should enjoy the feel of pavement beneath my feet and the odors of asphalt and automobile exhausts. Good and bad fortune were equally attractive when viewed in such a context. Hunger was as interesting as satiety. A life without sight was as interesting as life with sight. Who was to say different? Society? The bulk of humanity?
They were living their first lives, cautiously aware that someday they would die. They had everything to lose. They could not take the risks. But I had been through death, had my insides burned out by it twice.
I was living a second life, freed of those cautious awarenesses.
I had nothing to lose. I could take all the risks. ~ John Howard Griffin

Stars glimmered and burned out in those beautiful eyes. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I used to be much heavier when I first started out acting and did a lot of crash dieting and a lot of crash exercise - a ton for a month before you burned out. Then I made a decision in my twenties to only do things that I can do for life, so everything's kind of in moderation for me. ~ Rhea Seehorn

I'll always choose a teacher with enthusiasm and weak technique over one with brilliant strategies but who is just punching the clock. Why? An enthusiastic teacher can learn technique, but it is almost impossible to light a fire inside the charred heart of a burned-out teacher. ~ Dave Burgess

That's a part that's always a challenge for athletes: trying to keep the passion alive while knowing it's still your job. There's no question that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, I'll be pretty burned out. And when that time comes, then I'll take a step back and take a look at it and see if I want to keep going. ~ Landon Donovan

It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate. ~ Stephen King

The orgasm is an explosion of energy that escapes from the conductors that should manage it. That overcharge spills out of the sexual organs, out of the chakras, and into the surrounding ganglia, into the nadis. This is why people experience tremors, shaking, vibrations, involuntary shudders, shouts, screams, etc: the energy of Eden is racing thorugh the nervous systems. We think it is "pleasurable," because the root energy is from Eden (bliss), but what we do not realize is that a short circuit destroys the conductor. That is, the orgasm destroys the nervous system, gradually.

This is why people who have a lot of sex, gradually lose their sexual power. People who repeat the orgasm gradually lose the ability to have it. They become impotent or become indifferent to sex because their energetic centers become burned out. Now, this is why everybody takes chemicals to stimulate their sex drive. This is why pornography became so popular, because it is an artificial stimulation for the sexual energy. This is also why people move towards more and more extreme sexual interests, because the areas that stimulated them previously become "burned out. ~ Samael Aun Weor

Low light demanded 'fast' film, usually ISO 400 or higher; the fastest available would be about ISO 1000. When the sun was bright, you would reach for ISO 64 to avoid the burned-out look of overexposure. ~ David Hewson

Protecting ourselves from loss rather than grieving and healing our losses is one of the major causes of burnout. Very few of the professionals I have treated for burnout actually came in saying that they were burned out. I don't think most of them knew. The most common thing I've been told is, 'There's something wrong with me. I don't care anymore. Terrible things happen in front of me and I feel nothing. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

As he walked out into the North Carolina sunshine, Lola's hand in his, a smile curved one corner of his lips.
Not so long ago, he'd stood on the burned-out bridge of the Dora Mae, thinking himself cursed with a beautiful underwear model and her sissy little dog. He'd always believed Lola Carlyle would be the death of him.
"We never did get around to watching Pride and Prejudice," she said, a teasing glint in her beautiful eyes.
Yeah, she would most definitely be the death of him, but what a way to go. ~ Rachel Gibson

...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

"The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? ~ Mark Twain

I was drawing professionally by the time I was 12. I used to do very detailed sort of photorealistic pen-and-ink work, and I burned out on it around, like, high school. And cartooning really got me back into drawing. ~ Dan Povenmire

People get so burned out on hearing about sexism, but you know what? I would love to burn out on it. I would love to never talk about that again, but until we're all equal I shall have to fight, and remain fighting. ~ Rose McGowan

That's the thing: You don't understand burnout unless you've been burned out. And it's something you can't even explain. It's just doing something you have absolutely no passion for. ~ Elena Delle Donne

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. - Jack London ~ Jack London

It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something ... the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe. ~ Jo Nesbo

A marriage, even one that goes awry, generates claims and needs that persist like an afterglow long after the emotional fire is burned out. ~ Wallis Simpson

For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them. ~ Itzhak Perlman

Dinner was a family affair. And oh, how she enjoyed it! Who knew there was so much to talk about each day? She loved when the men shared stories about their work in the mines, while she often regaled them with stories about life in the castle when she was a small child or about the types of birds she spotted from the window. And then there were the questions. She found she had many! After staying silent for so long, there was much she longed to know, and she was always interested in learning more about the men and their lives. She wanted to know who had carved the beautiful wooden doorways and furniture around the cottage, and why the deer and the birds seemed to linger at the kitchen window while she prepped meals.
"They must adore you, as we do," gushed Bashful.
"And I you!" Snow would say. She found she could talk to them till the candle burned out each night.
It felt like she was finally waking up and finding her voice after years of silent darkness. And while she promised the men she would not do more than her share of the housework, she couldn't help trying to find small ways to repay them for their kindness when she wasn't busy strategizing. Despite their protests, she prepared a lunch basket for them to take to work each day. She mended tiny socks. And secretly, she was using yarn and needles she had found to knit them blankets for their beds. It might have been summer, but she couldn't help noticing they had few blankets for the winter months. ~ Jen Calonita

I was burned out, and my wife and I were having our first kid, so I wanted to take some time off. In this business, if you take too long, the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. ~ Chris O'Donnell

The crime scene was a small burned out house, blackened support beams sticking up like rotten teeth from the piles of char and ash on the ground. The occasional curl of half-burned insulation lay like thin snakes, poisonous and waiting. ~ Alex Hughes

Now that I am burned out and I'll never
accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching
classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for
pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without
worrying about any importance whatsoever. ~ Richard Feynman

I do whatever comes my way. But I get burned out on stage. It's a lonely world. I think part of the romanticism about being on the road is you get to meet a lot of - my mom once told me, "You've probably got a woman at every port." Like I'm a pirate. Obviously she doesn't know her son that well. ~ Zach Galifianakis

Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure). ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

And, because in some hard core of me, in some stubborn trench of selfish refusal, I could not, even at ten years of age, surrender to anything or anyone, I fought that pain. I analysed its offensive, and found its lines of attack. It festered, like the corruption in a wound turned sour, drawing strength from me. I knew enough to know the remedy. Hot iron for infection, cauterize, burn, make it pure. I cut from myself all the weakness of care. The love for my dead, I put aside, secure in a casket, an object of study, a dry exhibit, no longer bleeding, cut loose, set free. The capacity for new love, I burned out. I watered it with acid until the ground lay barren and nothing there would sprout, no flower take root. ~ Mark Lawrence

After All This"

After all this love, after the birds rip like scissors
through the morning sky, after we leave, when the empty
bed appears like a collapsed galaxy, or the wake of
disturbed air behind a plane, after that, as the wind turns
to stone, as the leaves shriek, you are still breathing
inside my own breath. The lighthouse on the far point
still sweeps away the darkness with the brush of an arm.
The tides inside your heart still pull me towards you.
After all this, what are these words but mollusk shells
a child plays with? What could say more than the eloquence
of last night's constellations? or the storm anchored by
its own flashes behind the far mountains? I remember
the way your body wavers under my touch like the northern
lights. After all this, I want the certainty of hidden roots
spreading in all directions from their tree. I want to hear
again the sky tangled in your voice. Some nights I can
hear the footsteps of the stars. How can these words
ever reveal the secret that waits in their sleeping light?
The words that walk through my mind say only what has
already passed. Beyond, the swallows are still knitting
the wind. After a while, the smokebush will turn to fire.
After a while, the thin moon will grow like a tear in a curtain.
Under it, a small boy kicks a ball against the wall of
a burned out house. He is too young to remember the wa ~ Richard Jackson

They called themselves flower children and advocated free love, yet all too often what they experienced was not so much love as deep disappointment and burned-out minds. ~ Gloria Gaither

I tried so many different musics. I kind of burned out on classical and wanted to make it fun again. I started playing with indie bands and country bands and finally realized electronic music brought my style to life. ~ Lindsey Stirling

This is my sixth series, and I'm burned out wondering if a show is going to change my life. Don't get me wrong, I love when people recognize my work. But I've given up worrying about whether it'll be seen by two people or two million or 22 million. ~ Charlotte Ross

I do get away maybe a little bit more than most coaches do, but that seems to have worked for me in my coaching career. I recommended the way not to get burned out from your job is to have some hobbies and get away from it when you can. ~ Steve Spurrier

But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer. We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier
not a policeman
and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,
because the warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also
because he would have been asleep. ~ Mark Twain

[Locating, from scratch, the gene related to a disease is like] trying to find a burned-out light bulb in a house located somewhere between the East and West coasts without knowing the state, much less the town or street the house is on. ~ Francis Collins

And about in the late '80s, I got kind of burned out a little bit. ~ Lee Majors

Guys ask me, don't I get burned out? How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl? ~ Tommy Lasorda

Dogbert gazing at night sky No matter how bad the day is, the stars are always there. Dilbert Actually, many of them burned out years ago, but their light is just now reaching earth. DogbertThank you for shattering my comfortable misconception. DilbertIt's the miracle of science. ~ Scott Adams

Fogarty rolled the cylinder in his fingers.' Know what's interesting? I had a look at this thing when they took it out. The insides are burned out.'
Are they?' Blue asked mildly.
It takes a lot to burn out one of those implants - almost impossible, in fact. You must love him very much,' Fogarty said quietly.
Yes,' Blue said. 'Yes, I do. ~ Herbie Brennan

Everything right now tends to be the same and very aggressive, and I think people are getting a little burned out on it. ~ DJ Shadow

Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it. ~ Juliana Hatfield

If you do things when you're burned out, it'll make you bitter. ~ Juliana Hatfield

Without energy being invested in resisting the unwanted or dueling with fears, we have more energy and attention available for noticing not only the disturbing, but the wonderful ... When we are not fixated on threat and defending ourselves, when we're not exhausted and burned out from chronic stress, we are able to see the daily evidence that we are in the midst of a mind-blowing miracle called Life ... Then we will experience breathtaking, heart-rippling moments that counterbalance every trial and tribulation. When we're fully conscious of the universe's artistry and generosity, who needs psychodelics or Prozac? ~ Charlette Mikulka

He could have a break at last, albeit a short one, one he sorely needed. And with that appealing thought he further squelched the subconscious screams, true message lost in the deceptive world of emotion and will. ~ Marcha A. Fox

The last rain had come at the beginning of April and now, at the first of June, all but the hardiest mosquitoes had left their papery skins in the grass. It was already seven o'clock in the morning, long past time to close windows and doors, trap what was left of the night air slightly cooler only by virtue of the dark. The dust on the gravel had just enough energy to drift a short distance and then collapse on the flower beds. The sun had a white cast, as if shade and shadow, any flicker of nuance, had been burned out by its own fierce center. There would be no late afternoon gold, no pale early morning yellow, no flaming orange at sunset. If the plants had vocal cords they would sing their holy dirges like slaves. ~ Jane Hamilton

You and McNab sat around talking about women and sports."

"I don't believe we got to sports. He had a woman on his mind."

Eve's sneer vanished. "You talked to him about Peabody? Damn it, Roarke."

"I could hardly slap him back. He's so pitifully smitten."

"Oh." She winced. "Don't use that word."

"It fits. In fact, if he took my advice ..." He turned his wrist, glanced at the unit fastened there. "They should be well into their first date by now."

"Date? Date? Why did you do that? Why did you go and do something like that? Couldn't you leave it alone? They'd have had sex until they burned out on it, and everything would go back to normal."

He angled his head. "That didn't work for us, did it?"

"We don't work together." Then, when his eyes brightened with pure amusement, she showed her teeth. "Officially. You start mixing cops and romance and case files and gooey looks at briefings, you've got nothing but a mess. Next thing you know, Peabody will be wearing lip dye and smelly girl stuff and dragging body skimmers under her uniform."

She dropped her head in her hands. "Then they'll have tiffs and misunderstandings that have nothing whatsoever to do with the job. They'll come at me from both sides, and before you know it, they'll be telling me things I absolutely do not want to know. And when they break it off and decide they hate each other down to the guts, I'll have to hear about ~ J.D. Robb

Is it a shame that I can't accept love? Am I too burned out to move towards what will keep me alive or too smart to get pulled into someone else's world? ~ Henry Rollins

Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It's death porn for the masses. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Needless to say, someday you're going to lose. Over time the body inevitably deteriorates. Sooner or later, it's defeated and disappears. When the body disintegrates, the spirit also (most likely) is gone too. I'm well aware of that. However, I'd like to postpone, for as long as I possibly can, the point where my vitality is defeated and surpassed by the toxin. And besides, at this point I don't have the leisure to be burned out. Which is exactly why even though people say, "He's no artist," I keep on running. ~ Haruki Murakami

People get burned out in big families, you can even see it in the naming of children. Like the first kid, "You were named after Grandma." The seventh kid, "You were named after a sandwich I had. Now get your brother, Reuben." ~ Jim Gaffigan

There is no great future for any people whose faith has burned out. ~ Rufus Jones

I was a time bomb waiting to detonate, burned out, sick of the music business, out of touch with everything and heavily abusing various substances, disillusioned with life, and intensely needed to work on my character. The only way I could see to do that was to withdraw completely from public life as I had known it before. ~ Charles Lloyd

I thundered hot water into the big tub, setting up McGee's Handy Home Treatment for Melancholy. A deep hot bath, and a strong cold drink, and a book on the tub rack. Who needs the Megrims? Surely not McGee, not that big brown loose-jointed, wirehaired beach rambler, that lazy fishcatching, girlwatching, grey-eyed iconoclastic hustler. Stay happy, McGee, while you use up the stockpiled cash. Borrow a Junior from Meyer for the sake of coziness. Or get dressed and go over to the next doc, over to the big Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party and join the festive pack. Do anything, but stop remembering the way Sam Taggart looks with all the wandering burned out of him. Stop remembering the sly shy way Nicki would walk toward you, across a room. Stop remembering the way Lois died. Get in there and have fun, fella. While there's fun to have. While there's some left. Before they deal you out. ~ John D. MacDonald

Night's candles have burned out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops. Hope tinged with melancholy - like life. ~ William Shakespeare

In the immediate aftermath of the great Chicago fire, a business proprietor erected a shack in front of his burned-out business. On a sign, he placed his name and the tagline that everything was gone but wife, children, and energy. ~ H.W. Brands

The teachers who get "burned out" are not the ones who are constantly learning, which can be exhilarating, but those who feel they must stay in control and ahead of the students at all times. ~ Frank Smith

I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Inman guessed Swimmer's spells were right in saying a man's spirit could be torn apart and cease and yet his body keep on living. They could take deathblows independently. He was himself a case in point, and perhaps not a rare one, for his spirit, it seemed, had been about burned out of him to fear that the mere existence of the Henry repeating rifle or the éprouvette mortar made all talk of spirit immediately antique. His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats of a pond lacking frogs. It seemed a poor swap to find that the only way one might keep from fearing death was to act numb and set apart as if dead already, with nothing left of you but a hut of bones. ~ Charles Frazier