Obsessions Are Quotes & Sayings

When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of his soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindications, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. It other words, the stuff of great books. — Betsy Lerner

We amateur athletes are peculiarly devoted to our fitness, and our obsessions can sometimes be a burden to our loved ones and a mystery to everyone else. — Peter Sagal

For many people it's Facebook, or sports on TV, whatever it is. I have my own demons that I battle. But whatever they are, you wish you could not do them. For most of us it's "I cannot get off Facebook." But imagine that your demon has you living on the street. I don't think those compulsions and obsessions are that different. — Jess Walter

All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous. — A.S. Byatt

Relationships are like wall paper patterns, you think your moving forward but your always caught in your own obsessions. — Darcey Steinke

Some thoughts are too angry to sleep. They lie awake all night and become obsessions. — Marty Rubin

I definitely have a Google obsession of Juliette Binoche. I'm obsessed. I'll read everything she's ever said. I can tell you anything you want to know about Juliette Binoche, or Jack White. Those are my two creepy obsessions. — Elizabeth Reaser

The reason the program is so successful is because alcoholics help other alcoholics. I've never met a Normie (our lingo for a person who doesn't have a problem with drugs and alcohol) who could even conceive of what it's like to be an alcoholic. Normies are always going, 'There's this new pill you can take and you won't want to shoot heroin anymore.' That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of alcoholism and drug addiction. These aren't just physical allergies, they're obsessions of the mind and maladies of the spirit. It's a threefold disease. And if it's partly a spiritual malady, then there's a spiritual cure. — Anthony Kiedis

My personal obsessions are much more interesting to me than other people's. — Peter Greenaway

The mind has a complex life that can seem quite autonomous - dreams, obsessions, unwilled memory are all instances of this. — Marilynne Robinson

Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news - the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers - at great cost to the rest of your life. — John Irving

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

Many of our threats are imaginary. The habits and even obsessions that we develop to keep them away are destructive and undermine our moods constantly. — Liz Miller

I've seen nerdists make tributes to their obsessions out of Legos that are like works of art. It just goes to show you how pervasive this stuff has become in our culture. It really is an ideology that you can subscribe to now. — Chris Hardwick

To the Finnish, being outdoors in nature isn't about paying homage to nature or to ourselves, the way it tends to be for Americans. We fetishize are life lists, catalog peaks bagged and capture pristine scenes of grand wilderness It is largely an individual experience. For the Finnish, though, nature is about expressing a close-knit identity. Nature is where they can exult in their nationalistic obsessions of berry-picking, mushrooming, fishing, lake swimming and Nordic skiing. — Florence Williams

How often do we use other people as screens upon which to project our obsessions? Our discontents, dreams, desires, and fears? Well, I always thought, often enough that its a wonder the whole waking world isn't simply viewed as an endless improvised film. One with as many screenwriters, producers, and directors as there are actors — Bradford Morrow

These trans are driven, I thought, like the mind, by electric current, and at once I was imagining all the pylons and the wires running down the valley, creating a path, a network, that was separate from the landscape so that we could pass through it at great speed, as thoughts also hurtle by so fast but are rarely in contact with reality. The mind likes to move on rails, I decided after a couple of days in Maroggia, always the same old reflections and anxieties and obsessions, one leading to the other with great predictability. The same switches, the same buffers and terminuses that you never get beyond. — Tim Parks

Meditation is one of the rare occasions when we're not doing anything.
Otherwise, we're always doing something, we're always thinking something, we're always occupied.
We get lost in millions of obsessions and fixations.
But by meditating-by not doing anything-
all these fixations are revealed and our obsessions will naturally undo themselves like a snake uncoiling itself. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Obsessions are always dangerous. — Agatha Christie

My three obsessions are mental illness, horror and religion. — Victor LaValle

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

In those moments, which were eternal I assure you, I had no location in the universe, nothing to grasp for that minimum of security which every creature needs merely to exist without suffering from the sensation that everything is spinning ever faster on a cosmic carousel with only endless blackness at the edge of that wheeling ride. I know that your condition differs from mine, and therefore you have no means by which to fully comprehend my ordeals just as I cannot fully comprehend yours. But I do acknowledge that both our conditions are unendurable, despite the doctor's second-hand platitude that nothing in this world is unendurable. I've even come to believe that the world itself, by its very nature, is unendurable. It's only our responses to this fact that deviate: mine being predominately a response of passive terror approaching absolute panic; yours being predominantly a response of gruesome obsessions that you fear you might act upon. — Thomas Ligotti

I'm more inclined to linger in the science pages of 'The Week' magazine. But my principle obsessions are still watching sitcoms and football. — Alan Davies

Indigo has a purifying, stabilizing, cleansing effect when fear, repression, and obsessions have disturbed your mental body. Indigo food vibrations are: blackberries, blue plums, blueberries, purple brocoli, beetroot, and purple grapes. — Tae Yun Kim

The obsessions of others are opaque to the unobsessed, and thus easy to mock. NASCAR, jazz, baseball, roses, poetry, quilts, fishing. If we're lucky, we all have at least one. — Roberta Smith

Seeing the world with all the unspoiled simplicity of a young child, you are free from concepts of beauty and ugliness, good and evil, and no longer fall prey to conflicting tendencies driven by desire or repulsion. Why trouble yourself about all the ups and downs of daily life, like a child who delights in building a sand castle but cries when it collapses? To get what they want and be rid of what they dislike, look how people throw themselves into torments, like moths plunging into the flame of a lamp! Would it not be better to put down your heavy burden of dreamlike obsessions once and for all? — Dilgo Khyentse

What is an obsession? It is a form of programming that has gotten completely out of hand. Religious fanatics are a prime example, as are those people who become enveloped in a political concept. Most of man's progress has come about as a result of obsessions. The Wright brothers were not just tinkerers with an idea; their idea swallowed them up. Most leaders are obsessed with power or possessed by egos so large their only concern is their place in history. I have known writers obsessed with a single subject. Like Bobby Fischer and chess, anything and everything outside their subject seems meaningless. Any art form - music, painting, dance - is done best by those who are completely possessed by it. Such possession often borders on madness. This world would be a sorry place without such madmen. — John A. Keel

Carefully observe the natural laws in operation in the world around you, and live by them. From following them, you will learn the morality of modesty, moderation, compassion, and consideration (not just one society's rules and regulations), the wisdom of seeing things as they are (not of merely collecting "facts" about them), and the happiness of being in harmony with the Way (which has nothing to do with self-righteous "spiritual" obsessions and fanaticism). And you will live lightly, spontaneously, and effortlessly. — Benjamin Hoff

I'm typing away, wondering why I had that Pepsi Throwback at such a late hour. Caffeine is a compulsion. Art is an obsession. Writing is both.
It weaves in and out, this obsession, forming a basket, a basket I can hide in while pulling its lid over top; it shuts out the noise and normalcy of living. It shuts out the people and caffeinated relationships I love so well. Can you live with an artsy hermit? A sketchy-betchy, meditative, BabyBoomingPseudoHippie? Then short-term visits are in order. — Chila Woychik

Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame.
For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort. — Karen A. Duncan

Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges. — Jon Ronson

Girls have all the same parts, basically, and so much of how they look depends on the attitude, expectations, and obsessions of those who are looking at them. — Frank Portman

The divide of race has been America's constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become. — William J. Clinton

But what I realized when I was looking back at them was that no matter how different they are, they're still coming from me, and they're still coming from my brain and my set of obsessions. I think that no matter how different I tried to make them, there were just these certain questions that I just kept circling back to as I was writing. I think they were the ones I was really swept up in in that decade. — Molly Antopol

If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you've said - unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It's like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. — Ann Coulter

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life. — Mary Ellen Mark

Obsessions are the only things that matter. — Patricia Highsmith

I'm an alcoholic who doesn't (and doesn't want to) drink anymore so I exist in a state of never-ending micro-addictions that reveal themselves in the form of obsessions. I was the same as a child. These obsessions are things I want, want to do, or want to be. I become so fixated I neglect every other aspect of my life. What results is that I get really good at doing a lot of different things but no matter what I do, it's never the thing that gives me the feeling, this is what I've been searching for, I am home. In other words, I never feel thin. One hundred percent of the time. It — Augusten Burroughs

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

I would say 70 percent of people who are in therapy are in therapy not because of their upbringing, not because of their mean sister or obsessions, but because of anxiety brought about by lack of financial security. — John Hodgman

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions. — John Ray

We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be "seen," when in fact we already know what they're about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there's a decent chance they will be "fiction-worthy," as you call it. The idea of the "sweep of ideas" is a complicated one. — Meg Wolitzer

We are living through an age of peculiar obsessions. — Jeremy Maddux

Your desintation is a life of meaning, fulfillment, creativity and joy. A life free of fears, obsessions, compulsions, and addictions, without the insecurities others activates so easily and the torments they create in you. WHen you resist your [life] experiences, you resist the guidance they offer. Anger, resentment jealousy and fear each show you in their own way what you need to change inside yourself in order to reach your destination. Are you listening? — Gary Zukav

Part of the art of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places
Henry Miller
As you put yourself and your work out there, you will run into your fellow knuckleballers. These are your real peers-the people who share your obsessions, the people who share a similar mission to your own, the people with whom you share a mutual respect. There will only be a handful or so of them, but they're so, so important. Do what you can to nurture your relationships with these people. Show them work before you show anybody else. Keep them as close as you can. — Austin Kleon

What else are we to do with our obsessions? Do they feed us? Or are we simply scavenging our memories for one gleaming image to tell the truth of what is hunting us? — Terry Tempest Williams

All artists' work is autobiographical. Any writer's work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them. — Kim Addonizio

The hardest part is not to repeat yourself. I don't really believe my core obsessions are going to change, but you need to look for ways to express them that are different. The main reason for doing that is not to bore yourself, and obviously, I don't want to bore readers. — Scott Turow

An emigres artistic problem: the numerically equal blocks of a lifetime are unequal in weight, depending on whether they comprise young or adult years. The adult years may be richer and more important for life and for creative activity both, but the subconscious, memory, language, all the understructure of creativity, are formed very early; for a doctor, that won't make problems, but for a novelist or a composer, leaving the place to which his imagination, his obsessions, and thus his fundamental themes are bound could make for a kind of ripping apart. He must mobilize all his powers, all his artists wiles, to turn the disadvantages of that situation to benefits.
[ ... ] Only returning to the native land after a long absence can reveal the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence. — Milan Kundera

Though there are many barriers to expressing unreserved love, no such impediments to a developing a loving and generous heart deter a spiritual warrior. He who is without love is bereft of richness of life. Compassion, empathy, kindness, tenderness, and patience are essential for love. Anger, frustration, jealously, greed, and hatred are the antonym to love. When we love other people with all our ferocity, we transcend the misuse, waste, pain, tragedy, death, anguish, erotic obsessions, unaccountable confusion, and self-absorbed personal ambitions that, if left unchecked, numb our earthly existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Obsessions and fixations are not really my field. All I know, when the mind really grabs hold of something, look out. — Sybil Adelman

Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art — Salvador Dali

Obsessions are nine tenths of my flaws. — Atticus

I have these obsessions that I do not completely understand, with the deep mark, with the ruptured surface, with scars and traces, traces that human beings are leaving on the earth. It is not a comment on the environment ... it is metaphysical. — Sophie Ristelhueber

All women who kill or have sexual obsessions or who are prostitutes have trouble with their fathers. — Catherine Deneuve

If Murakami's novels are grand enigmas, his stories are bite-sized conundrums. ( ... ) The great pleasure of the new story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is watching Murakami come at his obsessions from so many different angles. There's a panoply of strangeness between these covers ( ... ) This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us. — Antoine Wilson

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born. That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one's conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones. — J.G. Ballard

Peeves are like that: my peeves are law, yours are unhealthy obsessions. — Robert Lane Greene

Two obsessions are the hallmarks of Nature's artistic style:
Symmetry- a love of harmony, balance, and proportion
Economy- satisfaction in producing an abundance of effects from very limited means — Frank Wilczek

If you don't have obsessions, don't write. my characters are obsessed. — Marguerite Young

There are a million great books out there if you just go to Google. There's a lot to pull apart. A lot of crazy, unbelievable stuff that's all completely true. I get into little obsessions, and I read everything I can find on one thing, and then I move onto another. — Caitlin Kittredge

I wondered if my life was going to be one immersion after another, a great march of shallow, unpopular popular culture infatuations that don't really last and don't really mean anything. Sometimes I even think maybe my deepest obsessions are just random manifestations of my loneliness or isolation. Maybe I infuse ordinary experience with a kind of sacred aura to mitigate the spiritual vapidity of my life ... no, it is beautiful to be enraptured. To be enthralled by something, anything. And it isn't random. It speaks to you for a reason. If you wanted to, you could look at it that way, and you might find you aren't wasting your life. You are discovering things about yourself and the world, even if it is just what you find beautiful, right now, this second. — Dana Spiotta

You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere. — Vladimir Nabokov

Since most of our fears are based on dark imaginings, it is vital for us to dwell on our magnificent obsessions and desired results - to look at where we want to go, as opposed to that troubled place where we may have been or may still be hiding. — Denis Waitley

Obsessions of the Orient, of the desert, of its ardor and its emptiness, of the shadows of palm gardens, of the garments white and wide - obsessions where the senses go berserk, where nerves are exasperated, and which made me, at the onset of each night, believe sleep impossible. — Andre Gide

Beyond being normal, our obsessions are positive, empowering and absolutely necessary.
What some may view as obsessive, odd, weird, abnormal and troublesome is a necessary part of our happiness. Our interests allow us to decompress, calm down, focus our energy, and gives us a reason to be excited about life - a purpose. An absence of obsessive interest leaves me feeling alone in the darkness. — Jeannie Davide-Rivera