Obsession Quotes

Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. ~ Andre Bazin

Sometimes women's attraction to true crime is dismissed as trashy and voyeuristic (because women are vapid!). Sometimes it is unquestioningly celebrated as feminist (because if women like something, then it must be feminist!). And some argue that women read about serial killers to avoid becoming victims. This is the most flattering theory - and also, it seemed to me, the most incomplete. By presuming that women's dark thoughts were merely pragmatic, those thoughts are drained of their menace. True crime wasn't something we women at CrimeCon were consuming begrudgingly, for our own good. We found pleasure in these bleak accounts of kidnappings and assaults and torture chambers, and you could tell by how often we fell back on the language of appetite, of bingeing, of obsession. A different, more alarming hypothesis was the one I tended to prefer: perhaps we liked creepy stories because something creepy was in us. ~ Rachel Monroe

The trouble with gardening is that is does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession. ~ Phyllis McGinley

The outside world holds no interest for me without you. -Edward ~ Stephenie Meyer

I'm very obsessed with 'The Real Housewives' franchise. It's a bad obsession. ~ Vanessa Marano

You can't stand clutter, and you have an obsession with orderliness. The furniture in here is centered exactly on the walls; the files on your desk are arranged in precise corners. If I had to guess, I would say you are probably a control freak, and that is usually symptomatic of a man who feels powerless to control his own life, so he tries to control every facet of his surroundings. ~ Judith McNaught

My obsession is with the macabre. I didn't write any of the stories which follow for money, although some of them were sold to magazines before they appeared here and I never once returned a cheque uncashed. I may be obsessional but I'm not crazy. Yet I repeat: I didn't write them for money; I wrote them because it occurred to me to write them. I have a marketable obsession. There are madmen and madwomen in padded cells the world over who are not so lucky. ~ Stephen King

The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly. ~ Benjamin Hoff

Love is an obsession. It has that quality to it. But there are healthy obsessions, and mine is one of them. ~ Pamela Stephenson

I still am a geek, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I see no shame in having an unhealthy obsession with something. ~ David Tennant

Hitler's one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohlweltlehre. ~ Umberto Eco

I learn from thinking about the future, what hasn't been done yet. That's kind of my constant obsession. ~ John Cale

His affection for his car was a fine debatable line between uncomfortable obsession and a deep love. ~ Rebecca Ethington

It's always the same old problem: how to find ourselves in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else's destinies. ~ Anne Lamott

For Jewish people, salmon has a special meaning, not just because it's a flavor we've had all along our diaspora. Salmon also have this special return-to-their-roots desire. At the end of their lives, salmon try to swim back to when they were born. Even if they can't, they have this obsession. We as diaspora people love that a lot about salmon. ~ Charlemagne Palestine

And yet, despite this portrait of a self assured woman, Cindy seemed to have a near obsession with being where everyone was and doing what everyone was doing. ~ Imbolo Mbue

Success requires a focused attention of your time and energy. This is true no matter what you want to achieve – to change the world or simply change apartments. All success stories come down to one person having a focused aim – so focused at times it can look like an obsession. ~ Nigel Cumberland

Obsession; when thoughts are held captive and no longer your own. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Someone with an obsession for arranging things in alphabetical order was an abcedist, whereas someone with an obsession for arranging them in reverse alphabetical order was a zyxedist. ~ Walter Moers

If we do survive death, then the next world is veiled from us for a purpose. Regardless of our endless conjecture, each of us will make this discovery individually, whether we wish to or not. However, we do know the conditions of the world around us and its inhabitants; we know these in detail. We can only conclude, then, that we are meant to focus on this world in which we live, and not groundless speculation about the next. History shows that an obsession with the afterlife smothers our concern for the living. ~ J.L. Bryan

The obsession with instant gratification blinds us from our long-term potential. ~ Mike Dooley

Much better now. And Sunny - there's no such thing as 'too much' when it comes to us. Too much mutual interest, or awareness, or desire, or too much damn love - there's no such thing."
"I love you beyond obsession," I murmur, terrified because it is too much.
"I love you to insanity," he replies, utterly solemn. "That's who I am, and that is who we are. I don't have any qualms about admitting it, and I don't have any regrets. Do you? ~ Olivia Lynde

It would be better for our country and the world in general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood for reason and the love of peace instead of heading wildly with blind obsession for new war. ~ Hermann Hesse

Well I have to jam but let me know if you want to talk or if, like, you want any additional info on Hsin. I may not be close to him as a person but I'm kind of a Vega lexicon. I've studied him like a creeper for a while. It's a little gross. This obsession should really stop sometime before they think I'm a stalker. ~ Ais

Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. "Because the Papists, like the Jews," he wrote, "insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews."39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption - a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther's Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul's ~ James Carroll

Now I approach climbing differently. I have learned less effort and energy, less obsession, and more feeling, as with piano, more emphasis and less frenzy. ~ Pat Ament

Two words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I'll play anything for you till you ask me to stop, till it's time for lunch, till the skin on my fingers wears off layer after layer, because I like doing things for you, will do anything for you, just say the word ... ~ Andre Aciman

Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses
like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work
that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Once we acquired the power to destroy ourselves, the very notion of human life had been altered; even the air we breathed was contaminated with the stench of death. Sachs was hardly the first person to come up with this idea, but considering what happened to him nine days ago, there's a certain eeriness to the obsession, as if it were a kind of deadly pun, a mixed-up word that took root inside him and proliferated beyond his control. ~ Paul Auster

The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth. ~ James Frey

The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed. ~ Chris Hedges

For those in whom a mere reaction has thus become an obsession, I do seriously recommend the imaginative effort of conceiving the Twelve Apostles as Chinamen. ~ G.K. Chesterton

There is an obsession in the Church with sin management. People think more about their sins than about their redemption through Jesus ~ John Paul Warren

Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact. ~ Marlene Dietrich

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted - an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore - despite ... ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I have an obsession with mortality. I saw a friend die when I was 18, and I can't get over it. ~ Talulah Riley

An obsession is where something will not leave your mind. ~ Eric Clapton

Jodi Arias had a deadly obsession with Travis Alexander. ~ Jane Velez-Mitchell

There are, of course, the people who revolve around themselves
but I agree with you, she's not one of that kind. She's totally uninterested in herself. And yet she's got a strong character
there must be something. I thought at first it was her art
but it isn't. I've never met anyone so detached from life. That's dangerous.'
'Dangerous? What do you mean?'
'Well, you see
it must mean an obsession of some kind, and obsessions are always dangerous. ~ Agatha Christie

Was there a magical love-of-the-dance moment, when the muse Terpsichore called to us and we lifted our arms and spun at one with the divine music of the Universe? I think not. Although pride and obsession can feel like love, I guess. ~ Meg Howrey

And they dare to rule the world! They have made it so ugly. Square houses! Their obsession with straight lines and right angles has ruined the earth! They consider all curves, all subtleties, all softness, all indefinites, female, and they shun them. They have poisoned and denatured everything they touch, and expect us to be grateful. ~ Lucy Ellmann

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural loving and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? ~ Herman Melville

Perhaps the same labeling obsession caused cartographers to split this body of water into two oceans, even though it is impossible to touch an exact point at which their currents begin to differ. Splitting. Labeling. Seeking out otherness. Some things don't change. ~ M.L. Stedman

Freud, who spoke German, used the term zwangsneurose (obsessional neurosis). The word zwang was translated as 'obsession' in London, but 'compulsion' in New York. Faced with confusion, scientists introduced the hybrid term 'obsessive-compulsive', a label subsequently given to millions of people, as a compromise. ~ David Adam

It is hundreds of tiny threads of memories, which sew people together through the years. Despite, their mental separation they stay woven into that tapestry out of habit, emotion, obsession or fear. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I will love you and protect you until the end of time. You're my girl, my obsession, my princess. I love you in a way they haven't invented yet. ~ Alexa Riley

Anyone who's ever shifted from general affection and enthusiasm for a lover to outright obsession knows what I mean: the relationship is just there occupying a small corner of your heart, and then you wake up one morning and some undefinable tide has turned forever and you can't go back. You need it; it's a central part of who you are. ~ Caroline Knapp

Following his studies with Carrel, Voronoff worked in Egypt for the Egyptian king. Voronoff soon became fascinated with the eunuchs that were part of the king's harem. In particular, he noted that the castration they received seemed to increase the speed at which the eunuchs aged. This observation was the beginning of Voronoff's obsession with a surgical answer to aging. Likely inspired by the pioneering work of his mentor and the excitement of the new surgical techniques, Voronoff began to dabble in experimental transplantation. But he went beyond the techniques that his mentor had perfected. In early experiments Voronoff transplanted the testicles of a lamb into an old ram, claiming that the transplant served to thicken the ram's wool and increase its sex drive. These early studies foreshadowed the work that would follow. ~ Nathan Wolfe

They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves. Not always, but at least occasionally, it can break our obsession with the self. ~ Kiran Nagarkar

If you try too much to change the outside, that shows that you are still attached. If a man tries to be detached, it shows attachment. Why bother about detachment if you are not attached? If a man escapes from women, it shows that sex is still the obsession. Otherwise, why escape from women if you are not obsessed? ~ Rajneesh

I think my sister Daphne's obsession with having children has a lot to do with wanting to erase the pain my mother caused. On one level, Daphne's approach makes more sense. Yet the thought of a redo is not only unappealing, but terrifying. I don't want that kind of power over anyone. I don't want to be something that someone has to overcome. After all, I think everyone would agree that it's far worse to be a fucked-up mother than it is to have one. ~ Emily Giffin

What you don't even realize now - what you will only come to understand in time, but lucky for you, I'm here to tell you - is you're not going to give two shits about this band in a few years. In fact, I guarantee that this group that you admire so much and that you are putting all of your love and dedication and devotion into will be nothing more than an obsession you will be immensely embarrassed of having had. One day you'll be in college, maybe you'll be at a party, and someone will say, 'Hey, do you remember The Ruperts? How shitty was their music?' and you will have a moment of crisis: Do you admit your former love for them, or do you concede, because you know in your heart that this person is right? And guess what you'll say? You'll say, 'Yeah, their music was utter. Putrid.Garbage. ~ Goldy Moldavsky

He carried that obsession with him always. And in the end, by its very wrongness, it saved his life. ~ Ford Madox Ford

His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw benieath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg. ~ Herman Melville

Every man needs an obsessio in order to enjoy life, and it was so much the better if that obsession was constructive. ~ Louis De Bernieres

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility. ~ Emil Cioran

Focus can become an obsession ... But your ability to sustain the drive to focus will depend upon how enjoyable and productive it is. So create an environment that makes you want to remain focused. ~ Mani S. Sivasubramanian

I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Since that day when he had kissed her in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, he hadn't been able to get the sensation of touching her skin out of his head. ~ Florencia Bonelli

... I fell in love with him even more, because I realized I was not just falling in love with Taymour but also with generations of him that connect through history, traits that had been passed down from one generation to the next. I was in love with his ancestry that stretched out for centuries. ~ Saleem Haddad

The only way to cure an obsession is to become obsessed with something else. ~ Leah Raeder

Siena DePiero...will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? Because you're in my head and my heart and my soul, and you have been for five years - ever since I first saw you. First you were a fascination, then you became an obsession, and now...I love you. The thought of you being in this world but not with me is more terrifying than anything I've ever known. So, please...will you marry me? ~ Abby Green

There have been men in arid deserts where the sun has so disfigured them that they have become things of horror – parched and blackened, twisted and torn. Their eyes run blood, their tongues are bitten through – and then they come upon water.
I know, because I was one of their number. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast. ~ James Gray

It is worth asking who decides what's an "obsession" and where it differs from meditation or the kind of deep dwelling on a subject we see in philosophy or the work of Robert Wilson, for instance? ~ Laura Mullen

[January 1944] As to this country, I have been lecturing now for three years to the troops and their attitude is the same. They don't believe in concentration camps, they don't believe in the starved children of Greece, in the shot hostages of France, in the mass-graves of Poland; they have never heard of Lidice, Treblinka or Belzec; you can convince them for an hour, then they shake themselves, their mental self-defence begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity has returned like a reflex temporarily weakened by a shock.
Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a phantasy world. So perhaps it is the other way around: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotic, who totter about in a screamed phantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts! Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered within sight of your daydreaming eyes would still be alive! ~ Arthur Koestler

God, I love sex. I mean really, who doesn't love this right here? ~ J. Daniels

Don't let your problems become your obsession. ~ Debasish Mridha

I like sweaters. I have a sweater obsession, I guess. ~ Drake

To be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything. ~ Carlos Castaneda

I don't get this whole super-skinny obsession. I really think women look more beautiful when they let their curves show. ~ Vanessa Marcil

He grinned, that sexy, I-fucking-own-you grin and released my ass, dropping me full force on top of my full-time obsession. ~ Alessandra Torre

46 - The Obstacle of Bookish Bedevilment
Read the scriptures but do not persist in being obsessed with them. If one were to be obsessed with the scriptures forming conjectures with its meaning, relying on one's preconception, the mistake is great, discard the scriptures, without argument, while it is a big mistake, similarly obsession with the scriptures, not seeking a wise master, is an even bigger mistake, discarding books and obsession with them are all wrong. If one were to be obsessed with books for Tao, one has been inflicted with bookish bedevilment, in not seeking a wise master the great task is jeopardized, one must study carefully, distinguish the right and wrong, seek out a wise master to confirm them, only then can one come to understand Tao.
四十六,书魔关
读经书而不可偏执经书也。若执经书以意猜度，依己偏见，误之甚矣，弃经书，全不理论，固是大错，若执经书，不求明师，更是大错，弃书执书皆非也。若执书为道，中了书魔，不求明师则误大事，必须细心钻研经书，辨别邪正，访求明师以证是非，方能明道。 ~ Liu Yiming

Despite the enormous pressures in Hollywood, Kim Kardashian never set out to fit in, and it's this exact nonconformity that drives our global obsession with her. ~ Jeetendr Sehdev

I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block. ~ Tennessee Williams

The late Curt Cobain captured the attitude of today's culture with the line, "Here we are; now entertain us." I believe that, unfortunately, many Christians have made Cobain's line the refrain of their friendships.
In my opinion, our cultural obsession with entertainment is really just an expression of selfishness. The focus in entertainment is not producing something useful for the benefit of others but consuming something for the pleasure of self. And a friendship based on this self-serving, pleasure-seeking mind-set can easily slip into a similarly self-serving romantic relationship that meets the needs of the moment.
But when we shift our relationship orientation from entertainment to service, our friendships move from a focus on ourselves to a focus on the people we can serve. And here's the punch line: In service we find true friendship. In service we can know our friends in a deeper way than ever before. ~ Joshua Harris

Writing has to be an obsession - it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.' ~ Lorrie Moore

The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end - wealth, fame, eternal salvation - but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or ~ Jon Krakauer

It's been an obsession of various genres, disciplines, and aspects and elements of movie-making. It's always been something that I've really aspired to, so doing something new and different, reinventing myself and working with new people is just the passport to the amazing world that is the movies. ~ David Gordon Green

seek a way or MAKE one.

Seek Success, not Popularity. It lasts longer.

Short cuts to success are none. Efforts only can achieve success.

Some call it Obsession I call it Dedication.

starting point of all achievement is desire.

Staying positive will win you Victory, positively. ~ Harsh Malik

This thing called Contrmporary America--and its obsession with televisions, game systems, and computers_has gone a littlr far if you ask me. Some call it the Information Age, but I'd tend to say it's more the Sitting-on-one's-butt-and-letting-other-people-do-the-thinking-for-you Age. ~ James Patterson

In English, we don't have a word for people who aren't virgins. What the non-virgin lexical gap really made me think was that our obsession with sexual purity is such that once you are no longer this THING, you are indescribable. ~ John Green

This was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with foreign languages. ~ John McWhorter

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability. ~ Richard Sennett

It wasn't healthy, my obsession with her, but it felt amazing. I never wanted to be apart from her. I wanted to live in her. Breathe her into me every second of every day, but reality was real, and that wasn't something I could do. ~ Tabatha Vargo

The more you care, the more you fear. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes. ~ Emile Zola

I feel like hair is the number one thing that makes me feel beautiful or not. If I have really bad hair, but my makeup's beautiful and I have a wonderful dress on, I'm still not happy. So if I wake up, and I've got 2 big zits on my face and my hair looks fierce, I feel ok. I have a weird hair obsession. ~ Amber Stevens

My obsession with pineapples nearly drove me mad. I dreamt of the days when I would be grown and able to buy a whole carton for myself alone. Although ~ Maya Angelou

A long time ago, the act of another put the dark in his veins, and it's been there ever since. The night he lost his true love, his heart and his brain became one, so that his heart was scheming and his brain was loving. 'That doesn't sound so bad', my dream-self thought, but suddenly I could feel it, and it was very bad indeed - for when a brain loves, it is only out of obsession, and when a heart schemes, it does not mean well. ~ Beck Sherman

The frenzy of the little-girl culture is something very unique, and I can only say that because I was one. The obsession - I can't really explain it. Everything is heightened to the maximum. ~ Nikki Reed

We have to free the Muslim mind from the obsession with limits and rules and forgetting the path and objective. This is truly a liberating process, and for me this is Islam: liberation from the ego, and in this case liberating ourselves from the wrong understanding of the religion. ~ Tariq Ramadan

I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug. ~ Steve Toltz

All extremes of feeling are allied with madness. ~ Virginia Woolf

I need to tell a story. It's an obsession. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later. ~ Isabel Allende

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue - smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm - and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than "really good." Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection. ~ Susan Peirce Thompson

My bookstore obsession grew to the point where I'd search for new shops during family trips, as though that were the reason for our travel. ~ Lewis Buzbee

No obsession is worth its salt if it does not consume the obsessed. ~ Dominique Frost

Every snapshot collector has obsessions. Some only collect photos of cars. Others like World War II, or babies, or old-timey girls in old-timey swimsuits. I happen to collect the weird stuff: photos that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little. The uncanny. ~ Ransom Riggs