40 Quotes About Obsession

Obsession, a force that can drive individuals to greatness or lead them down a perilous path, has long fascinated writers, philosophers, and artists. It is a double-edged sword, capable of intense focus and passion, yet also holding the potential for overwhelming fixation. In exploring the intricate layers of obsession, we uncover powerful insights into the human condition—our desires, motivations, and vulnerabilities. This curated collection of the top 40 quotes about obsession delves into these multifaceted dimensions, offering perspectives from renowned thinkers and creatives who have pondered this compelling aspect of human nature. Whether you seek inspiration, reflection, or a deeper understanding of what it means to be consumed by desire, these quotes promise to captivate and challenge your perceptions.

1. “All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.” - Virginia Woolf

2. “I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.” - Emily Brontë

3. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.” - J.K. Rowling

4. “I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin.I want.” - Sara Gruen

5. “He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.” - W. Somerset Maugham

6. “There is practically no activity that cannot be enhanced or replaced by knitting, if you really want to get obsessive about it.” - Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

7. “It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother.” - Stephenie Meyer

8. “Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face? That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course.’ No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.’ What are you trying to say?’ I’m saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you.” - Paulo Coelho

9. “You fueled my obession, even encouraged it and your selfishness ruined my life” - Novala Takemoto

10. “All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.” - Umberto Eco

11. “I wish I knew how to quit you.” - Annie Proulx

12. “One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing intoa habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession.Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic,physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.” - Niyi Osundare

13. “The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.” - Rick Riordan

14. “Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.” - Anne Lamott

15. “...an obsession is a way for damaged people to damage themselves more.” - Mark Barrowcliffe

16. “But it is easy to call a man in love a mad man.” - Brendan Connell

17. “If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.” - Emily Brontë

18. “This isn't a crush, it's obsession.You are never not in my thoughts. Your scent carries across a room and paralyzes me with longing. I don't want to hold your hand. Part of me wants to set you on fire and hold you while the flame consumes us both, to eat your heart so I know that only I possess it entirely.” - Gwen Hayes

19. “You don’t always get to chose who you fall in love with” - Stephani Hecht

20. “The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen.I stared at her.You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven't grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you're mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you're tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful.I stared at her.When I see you the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops and it is a beautiful place and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you.I stared.When you're gone, the World starts again, and I don't like it as much. I can live in it, but I don't like it. I just walk around in it and wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It's the best fucking thing I've ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful Girl, is why I stare at you.” - james frey

21. “I'm not good enough for you. But no one is. And most men, good or bad, have limits to what they would do, even for someone they love. I have none. No God, no moral code, no faith in anything. Except you. You're my religion. I would do anything you asked. I would fight, steal, kill for you." -Kev to Win” - Lisa Kleypas

22. “I don't possess these thoughts I have --- they possess me. I don't possess these feelings I have --- They obsess me.” - Ashly Lorenzana

23. “When two people love each other as we do, no one can come between them, no one," I said, amazed at the words I was uttering without preparation. "Lovers like us, because they know that nothing can destroy their love, even on the worst days, even when they are heedlessly hurting each other in the cruelest , most deceitful ways, still carry in their hearts a consolation that never abandons them." (p.191)” - Orhan Pamuk

24. “It's all you think about, all you talk about, and all you want us to talk about. What in the world would we call something like that? Oh, yeah! An obsession!” - Maggie Stiefvater

25. “Is it love, obsession, infatuation? You don't know. You think of a strange and beautiful word you read about once, Limerance, a psychological term, meaning an obsessive love, a state that's almost like a drug. Need like a wolf paces the perimeter of your world, back and forth, back and forth, never letting up. ...You're appalled by the new appetites within you, kicking their feet and clawing to get out.” - NIkki Gemmell

26. “Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.” - Tahir Shah

27. “Interest is never enough. If it doesn't haunt you, you'll never write it well. What haunts and obsesses you may, with luck and labour, interest your readers. What merely interests you is sure to bore them. (from Workbook)” - Steven Heighton

28. “Deep within I'm shaken by the violence of existing for only you...” - Sarah McLachlan

29. “Oftentimes winning can become an addiction, whether good or bad, to the point where you would rather lose it all before you lose at all.” - Criss Jami

30. “That’s the thing about success and happiness. Every time I fall in love I become absolutely, pathologically obsessed. The moment that you have what you want, and you’re not totally ready for it, you become obsessed with the idea that you don’t deserve it.” - Sara Quin

31. “I’d once again see that bob of blonde hair back on my pillow, that pink hot smile beaming toward me as I heroically win her heart in some kind of Count of Monte Cristo or Great Gatsby-esque gesture… you know minus the long imprisonment or swimming pool death!” - Tom Conrad

32. “I don't believe outstandingly beautiful and charismatic women create obsession in what would otherwise be normal men, but rather they attract the weirdos and the stalkers; flames in the darkness that these disturbing people inhabit, unwittingly drawing them closer until they extinguish the very flame they were drawn to.” - Rosamund Lupton

33. “My inner goddess confirms that staring at a beautiful/rich/powerful face is the basis of True Love.” - Jess C. Scott

34. “Any earthly production would have been cancelled at the slightest suggestion of rain, but this was William’s Stage—it was William’s call—and if the children danced and the congregation remained transfixed, the show would go on.” - Jake Vander Ark

35. “William looked up... through his tears... past the catwalk and lights... past the sky... through the dark and clouds and stars and into the void where he once knew God existed, then turned himself outside-in, alone, and asked, 'Why?” - Jake Vander Ark

36. “To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.” - Idries Shah

37. “how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was anotherappleto slice into pieces.Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon,that meanswe're inconsolable.Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.These our bodies, possessed by light.Tell me we'll never get used to it.” - Richard Siken

38. “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

39. “Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.” - Theodore Sturgeon

40. “[...] passion is by no means the fuller life which it seems to be in the dreams of adolescence, but is on the contrary a kind of naked and denuding intensity, verily, a bitter destitution, the impoverishment of a mind being emptied of all diversity, an obsession of the imagination by a single image.” - Denis de Rougemont