95 Powerful Obsession Quotes

In a world where passions drive our choices and influence our paths, obsession emerges as a powerful force. Though often seen in a negative light, obsession can be the spark that fuels relentless pursuit, creativity, and unwavering dedication. From historical figures to modern thinkers, many have experienced the fervor of obsession and articulated its grip in profound ways. In this collection, we've curated 95 compelling quotes that explore the multifaceted nature of obsession—each offering insights, warnings, and inspiration. Whether you're navigating your own obsessions or simply reflecting on the concept, these quotes promise to illuminate the complexities and power of this enigmatic force.

1. “Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.” - Jeffrey McDaniel

2. “May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” - Emily Brontë

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

4. “I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.-Claude Frollo ” - Victor Hugo

5. “Why should I blame her that she filled my daysWith misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire?What could have made her peaceful with a mindThat nobleness made simple as a fire,With beauty like a tightened bow, a kindThat is not natural in an age like thisBeing high and solitary and most stern?Why, what could she have done, being what she is?Was there another Troy for her to burn?” - William Butler Yeats

6. “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

7. “He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he'd burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn't done it, and wouldn't had made her his anyway, but you see why he'd have figured it did. Or maybe I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don't love like that anymore. Or maybe it's only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don't know. ” - Peter S. Beagle

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

9. “I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” - Charlotte Brontë

10. “Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.” - Marlene Dietrich

11. “I like the relaxed way in which the Japanese approach religion. I think of myself as basically a moral person, but I'm definitely not religious, and I'm very tired of the preachiness and obsession with other people's behavior characteristic of many religious people in the United States. As far as I could tell, there's nothing preachy about Buddhism. I was in a lot of temples, and I still don't know what Buddhists believe, except that at one point Kunio said 'If you do bad things, you will be reborn as an ox.'This makes as much sense to me as anything I ever heard from, for example, the Reverend Pat Robertson.” - Dave Barry

12. “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

13. “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

14. “From the first time I saw you, I've belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me. -Jace” - Cassandra Clare

15. “You become what you think about all day long.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

16. “We need repentance. You see, repentance is not only going to a priest and confessing. We must free ourselves from the obsession of thoughts. We fall many times during our life, and it is absolutely necessary to reveal everything [in Confession] to a priest who is a witness to our repentance.Repentance is the renewal of life. This means we must free ourselves from all our negative traits and turn toward absolute good. No sin is unforgivable except the sin of unrepentance.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

17. “The love object occupies the thoughts of the person diagnosed as 'in love' all the time despite the probability that very little is actually known about it. To it are ascribed all qualities considered by the obsessed as good, regardless of whether the object in question possesses those qualities in any degree. Expectations are set up which no human being could fulfill. Thus the object chosen plays a special role in relation to the go of the obsessed, who decided that he or she is the right or the only person for him. In the case of a male this notion may sanction a degree of directly aggressive behavior either in pursuing the object or driving off competition.” - Germaine Greer

18. “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

19. “Don't be self-conscious, if I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it.” - Stephenie Meyer

20. “It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.” - John Fowles

21. “Mujer, you own my soul.” - Simone Elkeles

22. “All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it.” - Charles Brockden Brown

23. “She’d ceased spying upon him, that was true, but the damage was done. Every time he sat at his desk, he could feel her eyes upon him, even though he knew very well she’d shut her curtains tight. But clearly, reality had very little to do with the matter, because all he had to do, it seemed, was glance at her window, and he lost an entire hour’s work.It happened thus: He looked at the window, because it was there, and he couldn’t very well never happen to glance upon it unless he also shut his curtains tight, which he was not willing to do, given the amount of time he spent in his office. So he saw the window, and he thought of her, because, really, what else would he think of upon seeing her bedroom window? At that point, annoyance set in, because A) she wasn’t worth the energy, B) she wasn’t even there, and C) he wasn’t getting any work done because of her.C always led into a bout of even deeper irritation, this time directed at himself, because D) he really ought to have better powers of concentration, E) it was just a stupid window, and F) if he was going to get agitated about a female, it ought to be one he at least liked.F was where he generally let out a loud growl and forced himself to get back to his translation. It usually worked for a minute or two, and then he’d look back up, and happen to see the window, and the whole bloody nonsense cycled back to the beginning.” - Julia Quinn

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

25. “Most people who fall obsessively in love claim that it happens precipitously, unexpectedly [...]But I believe there's almost always a prerequisite. Falling in love in this way will usually occur at a time of transition. We may not be conscious of it, but something has ended and something new must begin. Romantic obsession is like a cataclysm breaking up the empty landscape. Like a strange exotic plant, it grows in arid soil. (pp. 27-28)” - Rosemary Sullivan

26. “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

27. “The truth was...he was in love with her. Totally over-the-line, no-going-back, not-even-dead-would-he-part kind of shit.” - J.R. Ward

28. “Each night I lie and dream about the oneWho kissed me and awakened my desireI spent a single hour with him aloneAnd since that hour, my days are layed with fire.” - L.J. Smith

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

30. “I think you can love a person too much.You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.” - Jodi Picoult

31. “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

32. “Passion out of passion's obstacles.” - Jeanette Winterson

33. “Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.” - Jeanette Winterson

34. “It may be that you are settled in another place it may be that you are happy but the one who took your heart wields final power.” - Jeanette Winterson

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

36. “This connection we have isn't going away, it's only getting stronger. Because the more I spend time with her, the closer I want to be.” - Simone Elkeles

37. “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

38. “If you're that obsessed with someone, why would you kill her?Humans are full of contradictions.” - Ai Yazawa

39. “Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.And without feet I can make my way to you,without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of youwith my heart as with a hand.Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.And if you consume my brain with fire,I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

40. “All right, you caught me. I'm secretly obsessed with you and spend all my free time writing about you in my journal. 'Dear Diary, today Will was an ass for the 467th day in a row. He's so dreamy” - Elizabeth Scott

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

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

43. “I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can't see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.” - Jack Llawayllynn

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

45. “and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds... but thank God it was not that echo alone that I worshipped. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart, mon grand pch radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I cancelled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and halfthrottled, I will shout my poor truth. I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine; Changeons de vie, ma Carmen, allons vivre quelque, part o nous ne serons jamais spars; Ohio? The wilds of Massachusetts? No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torneven then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.” - Vladimir Nabokov

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

47. “From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

48. “I am the scourge of God” - Peter Ackroyd

49. “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

50. “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

51. “All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered.” - Cassandra Clare

52. “The outside world holds no interest for me without you." -Edward” - Stephenie Meyer

53. “Mine first --mine last-- mine even in the grave!” - Louisa May Alcott

54. “Life is obsession and so is reading :D” - Rukamanee Maharjan

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

56. “My whole life was about her, what if her whole life wasn’t all about me?” - Jodi Picoult

57. “I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference” - Ayn Rand

58. “I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.” - E. Lockhart

59. “We have formed a sick little friendship over the past year” - Dee Remy

60. “I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them.” - Criss Jami

61. “An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.” - Criss Jami

62. “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

63. “Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders.” - Marya Hornbacher

64. “I will be with her again, or I will die. There aren’t any other options” - Julie Kagawa

65. “No one but another painter could know the delicacy required to balance the complexities, to keep reality at bay in order to remain in the innermost center of his work.” - Susan Vreeland

66. “I wish there was a word more than ‘love’ itself to convey what I feel for you.” - Faraaz Kazi

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

68. “The only thing more dangerous then a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency...” - Terry Pratchett

69. “جمع الكتب هو استحواذ، ومرض، وإدمان، وفتنة، وقدر. هو ليس بهواية. من يقوم بذلك فلأنه عليه القيام به. ومن لا يقوم بذلك، فيعتقد أنه شبيه بجمع الطوابع” - Jeanette Winterson

70. “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

71. “At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.” - Benjamin J. Carey

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

73. “A true artist removes his heart willingly, allows constructive criticism to stomp it, then puts it back—bruised and aching—as he continues to strive for excellence due to the all-consuming obsession and love for his art.” - H G Mewis

74. “As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting pressure. There was no way out once he was in, no genuine rest, no one to talk to who was capable of understanding the complexity (simplicity) of the problem or the approaches to a tentative solution. There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or "terror in a lonely place," the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind. As a mathematician he was free from subjection to reality, free to impose his ideas and designs on his own test environment. The only valid standard for his work, its critical point (zero or infinity), was the beauty it possessed, the deft strength of his mathematical reasoning. THe work's ultimate value was simply what it revealed about the nature of his intellect. What was at stake, in effect, was his own principle of intelligence or individual consciousness; his identity, in short. This was the infalling trap, the source of art's private involvement with obsession and despair, neither more nor less than the artist's self-containment, a mental state that led to storms of overwork and extended stretches of depression, that brought on indifference to life and at times the need to regurgitate it, to seek the level of expelled matter. Of course, the sense at the end of a serious effort, if the end is reached successfully, is one of lyrical exhilaration. There is air to breathe and a place to stand. The work gradually reveals its attachment to the charged particles of other minds, men now historical, the rediscovered dead; to the main structure of mathematical thought; perhaps even to reality itself, the so-called sum of things. It is possible to stand in time's pinewood dust and admire one's own veronicas and pavanes.” - Don DeLillo

75. “Nobody's bought this land. And no one's going to want it either. It's dying land, lonely land.""Like me, then," I said."Yes, like you." You chewed the corner of your lip. "You both need saving.” - Lucy Christopher

76. “I thought you wanted to catch a camel," you tried again."No.""I want to.""Well, you go then."You laughed. "I want your beautiful face where I can see it” - Lucy Christopher

77. “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

78. “When someone is stalking you because they think you are stalking them, it makes you wonder who really is the true stalker?” - Shannon L. Alder

79. “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

80. “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

81. “This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me to life. When excitement wells up inside my chest in a way that doesn’t happen in every day life. Today my fingertips were cracked and bleeding. I made no progress despite great conditions. Now I am on the ground and can hardly contain my excitement to get back on the wall. It’s a crazy rollercoaster and I owe my family and partners a great deal for encouraging me through it all.” - Tommy Caldwell

82. “The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.” - Edgar Allan Poe

83. “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

84. “Kiss me twice, I am schizophrenic .. Kiss me ten times, I am obsessive!” - أحمد عمارة

85. “He was possessed now with that obsession for the cross in which so many lips have worn themselves away on crucifixes.” - Émile Zola

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

87. “Because I want to have sex with him--and because that's sinful--I'm blushing and flushing furiously under his scrutinizing scrutiny.” - Jess C. Scott

88. “We are the wilderness withinScreaming out for true expression.Even when we’re sleeping,There’s no escape from this obsession.” - jay woodman

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

92. “If you have to speculate if someone loves you and wants to be with you, chances are they don't. It's not that complicated. Love, in most cases, betrays the one feeling it. Don't waste moments waiting and wondering. Don't throw away your time dreaming of someone that doesn't want you. No one is that amazing, certainly not the one who would pass you up.” - Donna Lynn Hope

93. “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

94. “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

95. “[...] 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