Obsessive People Quotes & Sayings

I always loved horror as a kid. On the one hand, I really love monsters, because in a way I feel like I related to their outsider status and like the sentimental romantic plight of the monster. More importantly though I feel like people are completely motivated by fear, especially with our political system here in America which is just degenerating into more and more fear mongering and it gets in the way of real discourse, plus it's just something I'm obsessive about and have always been a little bit of a paranoid guy. — Larry Fessenden

The standards for what is "normal" have become so formalized and yet so restrictive that people need a break from that horrible feeling of never being able to measure up to whatever it is they think will make them acceptable to other people and therefore to themselves. People get sick with this idea of change; I have been sick with it. We search for transformation in retreats, juice fasts, drugs and alcohol, obsessive exercise, extreme sports, sex. We are all trying to escape our existence, hoping that a better version of us is waiting just behind that promotion, that perfect relationship, that award or accolade, that musical performance, that dress size, that raucous night at a party, that hot night with a new lover. Everyone needs to be pursuing something, right? Otherwise, who are we? How about, quite simply, people? How about human? — Emily Rapp

If you have a good ear for dialogue, you just can't help thinking about the way people talk. You're drawn to it. And the obsessive interest in it forces you to develop it. You almost can't help yourself. — Robert Towne

Some young ladies are so starved for male approval that what should be a normal attraction to men is accelerated into an obsessive need for male affirmation. Tragically, these dear ladies allow themselves to be devoured in the arms of men who have neither regard not respect for them as people. — T.D. Jakes

You have to be able to observe life as if you were a camera all the time, constantly looking at light and the way that things are placed and the way people hold themselves. You need the ability to see something in someone or something that no one else really sees and be able to bring that to light. Basically, you have to be an obsessive crazy person. — Ryan McGinley

We love winners, even though they're very rarely particularly likeable people. They're almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn't matter. We forgive them. We like them while they're winning. — Fredrik Backman

It takes an obsessive streak that borders on lunacy to go rummaging around in the past as memoirists are wont to do, particularly a fragmented or incendiary past, in which facts are sparse and stories don't match up. I don't know if memoirists as children are lied to more often as kids or only grow up to resent it more, but it does seem we often come from the ranks of orphans or half-orphans-through-divorce, trying to heal schisms inside ourselves. Like everybody, I suppose, people we loved broke our hearts because only they had access to them, and we broke our own hearts later by following their footsteps and reenacting their mistakes. — Mary Karr

You work with people who are obsessive about shopping, obsessive about owning things and buying things, like this purchase is going to make them happy. And you want to say to them, 'You know, no amount of real estate is gonna fill that void.' — David LaChapelle

Realism is for lazy-minded, semi-educated people whose atrophied imagination allows them to appreciate only the most limited and convention subject matter. Re-Fi is a repetitive genre written by unimaginative hacks who rely on mere mimesis. If they had any self-respect they'd be writing memoir, but they're too lazy to fact-check. Of course I never read Re-Fi. But the kids keep bringing home these garish realistic novels and talking about them, so I know that it's an incredibly narrow genre, completely centered on one species, full of worn-out cliches and predictable situations--the quest for the father, mother-bashing, obsessive male lust, dysfunctional suburban families, etc., etc. All it's good for is being made into mass-market movies. Given its old-fashioned means and limited subject matter, realism is quite incapable of describing the complexity of contemporary experience. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The path to accepting your sexuality has to start somewhere. For those identify as heterosexual, the childhood bliss of an early crush is typically encouraged and praised. Milestones such as your first date and the prom are celebrated by parents and friends.
But when you're anything other than straight, it's more complicated; your growth gets shrouded and stunted. That's why a lot of queer people, when they fall in love and get into a relationship for the first time, revert to a kind of prepubescent puppy love: spontaneous, impulsive, obsessive, and ecstatic. I've heard many people express annoyance at friends who "just came out and it's totally cool and whatever, but do they have to talk about it all the time?" My answer to that is "Yes. Yes, they do. Don't you remember puppy love? Well, imagine if you had to hide it for twenty years. So yeah, if they wanna gush about it, let them gush. There's a first time for everything. — Hannah Hart

In neuroscience, our textbook showed how the brain scans of people newly in love look a lot like the brain scans of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In each case, your dopamine is suppressing your serotonin. — Daria Snadowsky

I know a lot of people with obsessive qualities, and there's a positive and negative part to it. There's the appeal of someone who's so deadly focused on something that they want or desire - there's a dedication and a single-mindedness that's great. But then if it goes on too long it becomes a psychosis. What's the French term for it? Idee fixe. — Callum Keith Rennie

Lane, I will become attached to you. It happens with everyone. Something about my personality makes me latch on to people. First, it was my friend Tina, then Liam, and now you. I'm sorry, but I know it will happen. It already is happening. Now that we've had sex, I don't want you out of my sight. — K. Webster

What I think makes people nerds is just being obsessive. I think that's what nerdiness really is - its people who don't just passively like something, they get passionate about whatever they like. — Brian Posehn

Better to do nothing than to engage in localized acts whose ultimate function is to make the system run more smoothly. The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, "doing something"; academics participate in meaningless "debates," etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Those in power often prefer even "critical" participation or a critical dialogue to silence, since to engage us in such a "dialogue" ensures that our ominous passivity is broken. The "Bartlebian act" I propose is violent precisely insofar as it entails ceasing this obsessive activity-in it, violence and non-violence overlap (non-violence appears as the highest violence), likewise activity and inactivity (the most radical thing is to do nothing). — Slavoj Zizek

We could express this power in the following way: Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality. Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments, it is as if our minds - turned outward - are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative. — Robert Greene

Notice that whenever we suffer pain, the mind is always quick to identify with the negative aspects of things and replay them over and over again, wounding us deeply. Almost all humans have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) of the mind, which is why so many people become fearful, hate-filled, and wrapped around their negative commentaries. This pattern must be recognized early and definitively. Peace of mind is actually an oxymoron. When you're in your mind, you're hardly ever at peace, and when you're at peace, you're never only in your mind. — Richard Rohr

I now believe that virtually all my problems could be attributed to my brain's being configured differently from those of the majority of humans. All the psychiatric symptoms were a result of this difference, not of any underlying disease. Of course I was depressed: I lacked friends, sex, and a social life, because I was incompatible with other people. My intensity and focus were misinterpreted as mania. And my concern with organization was labeled as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Julie — Graeme Simsion

I wasn't obsessed by magic. People say, 'How you can you claim you practiced eight hours a day and weren't obsessed?' Well, people go to a job they don't even like for eight hours a day; it's not obsessive if it's something you like. — Ricky Jay

The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers. — Margaret Heffernan

When I write I like to just say everything that people think about but never express vocally. I just get deep into it; I'm a bit obsessive about music. — Drake

Singers attract fans with aspects of their own personality. People feel I'm passionate and obsessive. They know this isn't a profession for me, it's a vocation. It's not an egotistical thing, but something else. I'm in a dialogue with my audience, and that's something I need — Steven Morrissey

Writing a book is about me doing the work to get from the obsessive particular to something that reaches out of that in some meaningful way. It doesn't come easy to me. I really admire people who do it with acuity, but I don't, and for me it takes the process of working on a book for years to do any thinking that I feel accomplishes anything. I don't do it off the cuff well. — Lucy Corin

What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that's toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay. — Moby

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior. — David Byrne

I just became obsessed with looking for new singers, unknown singers, people that maybe have been forgotten, and really checking them out and analyzing what they do - and obsessive listening. I think that's the core of my work on music - has been just listening to things and listening to singers. — Cecile McLorin Salvant

Fashion is this obsessive narrative that people don't understand but they can't stop looking at. — Rita Ora

I must say that when I first learned of the existence of the Australian Greenhouse Office, I assumed it was responsible for supplying tomatoes to the Parliament House kitchen. But, no, as I soon learnt as industry minister, it was in fact a government funded redoubt of veritable soldiers in a war against carbon dioxide. The zealotry and obsessive passion of these warriors in the battle against the apparent evils of carbon dioxide remains a curiosity to me. After fighting these people for three years as industry minister, I really did wish they would just go away and grow tomatoes. — Nick Minchin

True artists, whatever smiling faces they may show you, are obsessive, driven people
whether driven by some mania or driven by some high, noble vision need not presently concern us. Anyone who has worked both as artist and as professor can tell you, that he works differently in his two styles. No one is more careful, more scrupulously honest, devoted to his personal vision of the ideal, than a good professor trying to write a book about the Gilgamesh. He may write far into the night, he may avoid parties, he may feel pangs of guilt about having spent too little time with his family. Nevertheless, his work is no more like an artist's work than the work of a first-class accountant is like that of an athlete contending for a championship. — John Gardner

To people like Dawn and me, people who are obsessive to begin with, the Fitbit is a digital trainer, perpetually egging us on. During the first few weeks that I had it, I'd return to my hotel at the end of the day, and when I discovered that I'd taken a total of, say, twelve thousand steps, I'd go out for another three thousand. "But why?" Hugh asked when I told him about it. "Why isn't twelve thousand enough?" "Because," I told him, "my Fitbit thinks I can do better. — Anonymous

All of us task-oriented obsessive compulsives must learn to slow down and let people into our lives. — Hans Finzel

A lot of times when I ask people what their apocalyptic fantasy life is like, they'll immediately say something like, "Oh, what I think is going to kill us is climate change or World War IV," and that's not what I'm interested in at all. The point is not about winning a bet about what's going to happen. The point is about the human action of examining the possibility, the kind of obsessive imagining about it. — Lucy Corin

There will always be vain, obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever the cost; there will always be people for whom owning beautiful, dangerous animals brings a sense of power and magic. — Susan Orlean

You've got the wrong girl."
"On the contrary ... " the voice murmured, "I've got exactly the girl I want." Her body turned to ice. Her mind fought for calm. There were people only yards away, yet she was alone ...
"You're bleeding." Lips closed over hers. A kiss so passionate that time faded and stopped ... so passionate, it sucked her breath away ... Searing heat swept through her- pain and pleasure throbbing through her veins. With a helpless moan, she leaned into him and realized with a shock the kiss had ended. — Richie Tankersley Cusick

A large part of many people's lives is consumed by an obsessive preoccupation with things. This — Eckhart Tolle

F you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes. It seems logical enough to me that if you tell a person he can't have sex, he's going to be obsessive about the subject. Then to give him the power to tell other people how to run their sex lives, well, that's just asking for trouble. In a way, it's like having a blind person teach Art History, isn't it? — Donna Leon

The writing is therapeutic for me, it's an introverted process, I'm really inside my head. It's a really obsessive process. The live show, though, is the opposite. It's an extroverted process. It pushes me to connect with people, and so it pulls me out of my head and just pulls me out of myself. — Fernando Torres

A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization the state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has overshot its ultimate goal-the liberation of man from material cares-and has become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Offered the choice of love or a garbage disposal, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal. — Ivan Chtcheglov

I'm just interested in women's friendships generally. It always seems to me, and this is just my pet theory, that women are kind of at the sharp end of capitalism one way or another. Mainly because they buy everything. In a practical sense, women buy most things. They're always comparing - to friends, to famous people, to other people. An obsessive act of comparison. — Zadie Smith

I love working with people who are inspired and obsessive. — Nicole Kidman

Making you believe what he wanted you to believe was his very reason for being. Maybe his only reason. I was intrigued by the way he turned events, or hints I had given him about people, into reality
that is, his kind of reality. This obsessive reinvention of the real never stopped, what-could-be having always to top what is.
...
I began to wonder which was real, the woman in the book or the one I was pretending to be upstairs. Neither of them was particularly "me." I was acting just as much upstairs; I was not myself just as much Maria in the book was not myself. Perhaps she was. I began not to know which was true and which was not, like a writer who comes to believe that he's imagined what he hasn't.
...
The book began living in me all the time, more than my everyday life. — Philip Roth

My reflections amount to a love story that is mostly made up, from memories that are mostly false, between people who were mainly not there. The things for which she was not there have her in them now more deeply because of her absence, and her effect on my way of seeing them. Anytime I note her absence from a thing, she arrives at once, as if summoned, entrenching herself more deeply than she exists in my memories of times when she was there, so that time, the sequence of what really happened, seems to curve around her. — Olivia Sudjic

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

I was traumatizing her. I could only hope that at three she was too young to retain any of this in memory, that in the years to follow I could make up for any future need for therapy I was creating now. Could I? Or would she always have a deep insecurity, the kind that send people careening from one disastrous romance to the next? And why did I have to live my life obsessed with these kinds of concerns, this constant attempt to control the most uncertain of outcomes, my own effect on someone else's mind? — Leah Stewart

Before hoarding became a phenomenon, people just called it "collecting" or "being nostalgic." I don't hoard, exactly, but I get it. It's a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It's a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention. I am amassing artifacts from the history of me. My garage is the storeroom and temporary exhibition hall of the yet-to-be-built museum documenting the rise and fall of the Marc Age. I am the curator. I decide the meaning and worth of the collection based on my feelings in a moment. — Marc Maron

These people are obsessive. They go overboard interpreting verbal and behavioral cues that take them way beyond reality. — Cary Cooper

Freshly sprung from my monogamous LTR, I had no idea how vulnerable I would be to the onslaught of chemicals your brain releases when you're attracted to someone. These chemicals are responsible for every single people-in-love-are-crazy-fools song, movie plot, and Shakespearean drama ever written. They stimulate the same area of the brain that lights up when you snort a fat rail of cocaine. This state of mind, limerence, is a biological relative of obsessive-compulsive disorder. If you are an addict, or perhaps have the sort of low-dopamine, low-serotonin brain soup best served with a side of SSRIs, you are perhaps more sensitive to the mind-altering power of limerence. And if you are a romantic, you are perhaps more likely to label this heady, overwhelming sensation love. Being a low-serotonin addict with romantic tendencies, I had to experience many crashed-and-burned affairs to understand that for me, love really was a drug. — Michelle Tea

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art — Susan Sontag

You don't choose who you fall in love with, do you? And once you do fall in love - that obsessive sort of love, that all-consuming love, where two people can't stand to be apart from each other for even a moment - how are you supposed to let a love like that pass you by? — Jordan Belfort

Facebook and pictures on the Internet have created such a different way of dating. It's not necessarily good because an obsessive quality can develop in people. — Alexander Koch

Anorexia is a disease that happens to people, mostly women and girls, who have obsessive, perfectionist personalities. — Crystal Renn

I'm not weird,' Elle said defensively.
'I mean in a good way. All the best people are.' He swallowed, as if he were thinking carefully. Elle saw he was a little bit drunk. 'You've got staying power. Like with the Georgette Heyers. Reading all of them, getting obsessive about them. And you know, much better to be obsessed with crummy romance books than, er - hard-core porn, or something. — Harriet Evans

I'm not as obsessive-compulsive about certain things; I give a lot of latitude to people and support people. I know that I can't do it myself and that you're only as good as the people you have behind you. — Donna Karan

My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track. — Sebastian Coe

I'm obsessive. I want to know the answer to how good I am. Most people aren't. — Daley Thompson

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it. — Anne Lamott

I categorize nerds as creative-obsessive. A lot of nerds are creative people who obsess almost unnaturally over the minutiae of things. — Chris Hardwick

My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive. — David Fincher

If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven. — Ben Elton

I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief. — Edward Hirsch