“It's extraordinary these obsessions. You conquer one but then you move onto another.” MovingExtraordinaryObsessionConquer Author:Marco Pierre White
“The world of psychology and the world of normal life tends to look down on obsession. It's not good for you, and certainly not good for your relationships. It's not good for a lot of things, but it's the only way to make a work of art.” WorldWayLooksArtPsychologyNormalObsessionWorks Of ArtOur RelationshipNormal Life Author:Michael Ventura
“The element of obsession is terribly important for an artist.” ImportantArtistElementsObsession Author:Michael Ventura
“Like Nietzsche's own writings on education, most of mine were relatively youthful ones. Both were inspired by a critical animus against prevailing trends in education: in Nietzsche's case, the production either of 'useless', dry-as-dust scholars or people 'useful' for the needs of an expanding industrial economy; in my case, a similar subjection of education to economic imperatives, but also to ideological obsessions, notably with promoting 'equality'.” PeopleNeedsWritingCasesEconomyEconomicMinesInspiredProductionsCriticalObsessionDustUselessDryTrendsScholarExpandingPromotingImperativesIdeologicalPrevailingSubjectionAnimus Author:David E. Cooper
“If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won´t have motor seizures, but instead something more subtle. The effect is something like a cognitive seizure, marked by changes of personality, hyperreligiosity (an obsession with religion and feelings of religious certainity), hypergraphia (extensive writing on a subject, usually about religion), the false sense of an external presence, and, often, the hearing voices that are attributed to a god. Some fraction of history´s prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have had temporal lobe epilepsy.” IfsWritingPersonsFeelingsVoiceReligiousLeaderSubjectsEffectsParticularSweetPersonalityHearingFocusedObsessionSpotsProphetSubtleMartyrMotorFractionsCognitiveSeizuresEpilepsyHearing VoicesEpileptics Author:David Eagleman
“Responding to climate change will become the obsession of the next decade in much the same way terrorism was this decade's obsession.” WayNextClimateClimate ChangeTerrorismDecadesObsessionResponding Author:Paul Saffo
“What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of good government, of the economy particularly. And this has hit education badly. The news you get from the universities in Nigeria is often appalling. I don't think a lot of it gets out. There is the obsession with cults and all kinds of dreadful things going on and all this is taking its toll and it is not surprising that quality of students and graduates who come out is not good. It will not be surprising if this shows in the quality of work they do.” IfsThinkingKindShowsGovernmentQualityTalkingEconomyHappenedStudentsNewsUniversityObsessionAll KindsGraduatesSurprisingCollapseSevereCultNigeriaTollsQuality Work Author:Chinua Achebe
“I'm in an odd place right now in New York where I routinely get trashed by every daily drama critic and have a few allies among weekly/monthly drama critics, and you sort of plot these things out and figure it out. But it's just what any writer goes through, periods of favor, periods of disfavor. And the trick is just to keep writing and to not let an obsession.” WritingFiguresNew YorkPeriodsDramaRight NowCriticsFavorsTricksObsessionOddPlotAllies Author:Tony Kushner
“I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.” PeopleThinkingAbilityTalentCarMathObsessionConcentrationAthletic Author:Ethan Canin
“I think the point of obsession with food means we're healthy as a species. When we're hungry, everything tastes good, hunger is the best spice. When you're in a area that has few resources, you work incredibly hard to have something. And then you make the something taste good. The greatest food in the world comes from the inventiveness of great privation. What emerges is all the miraculous fermentations and all the strong flavors. You put it together in the right way, it's delicious. That defines survival, and our human species.” ThinkingWorldMeanTogetherStrongHealthySurvivalHungerHungryObsessionInventiveness Author:Jonathan Gold
“Yet it's true that looks matter in politics... It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country... Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and John Edwards almost always look good, and pretty much the same, in dark suits or casual wear. Fred Thompson always looks crepuscular and droopy. Often Hillary Clinton looks great, and sometimes she looks tired, heavier or puffier.” CountrySometimesDarkTiredClintonObsessionBarack Author:Maureen Dowd
“I think the Donald Trump's obsession is, is bigger than just polling. I mean it's funny because we've been harping on polls like never before, Trump was harping on his own polls endlessly. I mean his stump speeches would begin with him crowing about his latest poll numbers and that was just a kind of odd convergence.” ThinkingKindMeanObsessionOdd Author:Frank Bruni
“Every book presents its own specific challenges, or should, and you're right that this one has a preoccupation with uncertainty. In this, Valiant Gentlemen is a rupture from previous work as its obsession is with the psychology of characters who are in states of unknowing living in unpredictable times where the stakes are unusually high.” BookCharacterChallengesPsychologyObsessionUncertaintyGentlemanUnpredictableUnknowing Author:Sabina Murray
“I'd work on Garbage or I'd edit a song or writing here, but I was able to do a lot of things with my family. There are things outside of Garbage, the whole band has come to realize that we need things like that. That's why we took that break. Garbage had swallowed us up and had become a full time obsession for us and we needed to escape that and reclaim our old lives.” WritingSongRealizingBreakMy FamilyObsession Author:Butch Vig
“The '80s just had this sense of outrageous fun coupled with great stories and characters. Then there's the practical effects and buckets of gore in movies. These are movies that, for the most part, still stand up to this day. But I guess the real reason for my love and obsession with this period is these were my first horror movies. I was a teenager during the '80s and I think spending that part of your life in that particular time really has an impact on you for the rest of your life.” ThinkingRealReasonCharacterFunHorrorObsessionTeenagerThis Day Author:Neil Marshall
“If people want to criticize a performance, that I understand. I think that's important. What's going on with this industry now is crazy. That obsession with celebrity is madness. I try as hard as I can not to read that stuff. Because most of the time it's a bit... factual. And it's frustrating because it's not about what you're setting out to do as an actor.” PeopleThinkingTryingImportantCrazyMadnessObsessionCriticizeFrustratingFactual Author:Juno Temple
“When you're first in love with somebody, and it's not true love, it's borderline obsession, it's kind of like an addiction. You switch into this weird, weird part of your mind when you just can't live without that person. And you want to envelop them. You want them flowing through your veins.” MindKindAddictionObsessionBorderline Author:Juno Temple
“I think all of us begin as writers. I wanted to be a writer from the time I as eight, long before I heard of jazz. The question is, once you have that obsession, what is your subject going to be and you often don't know for some time. It might become fiction, it might be non-fiction, and if it's non-fiction it can go in any number of directions.” ThinkingLongJazzObsession Author:Gary Giddins
“I think love and obsession are almost one in the same thing at some times. Because the person you end up falling in love with, there is an element of obsession in the early days - it's all you can think about.” ThinkingFallFalling In LoveObsession Author:Ladyhawke
“The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.” Obsession Author:Barbara Kingsolver
“I was coming from a theater background. I had an obsession with classic film and cool, interesting, intelligent television. I didn't really understand the way the mainstream television industry worked. I just thought "The wire is so good that it's going to be a huge hit, and we'll get awards up the yin-yang forever." That's what I thought!” FilmInterestingForeverIntelligentObsessionClassicWire Author:Lance Reddick
“When looking at female body builders and reading about the industry and the culture, their bodies just break down. They end up having to get breast implants and not having menstrual cycles. The obsession of pushing your physical self way beyond what nature is expecting is really interesting. I liked the idea of these women; it's their career, but it's also their obsession.” CultureReadingInterestingBreakFemaleObsessionExpectingBreaking DownReally InterestingBuilderFemale Body Author:Wardell Milan
“Aristocratic depression has this cosmic dimension to it, where it's asking these big questions about, "Why?" "What is the purpose of all this?" Neuroses of the middle class is the banishment of aristocratic depression, because it's kind of this obsession with quotidian detail that pushes these larger questions away.” KindPurposeObsessionMiddle ClassCosmic Author:Lawrence Douglas
“We're a culture that's obsessed with people who make and who squander ridiculous amounts of wealth, which seemed an obsession well worth interrogating in a novel. That probably accounts for what some have called the book's "sweeping" feel, but I don't know that I set out to be cinematic. I wouldn't know how to do that in a novel, specifically.” PeopleCultureWealthNovelRidiculousObsessionObsessed Author:Matthew Specktor
“Our present era, to my mind, is characterized by a profound forgetting of the past. "The future, the future, the future." The 21st century, all the technology obsession.” MindPastForgetTechnologyProfoundObsession21st Century Author:How to Dress Well
“At some point, you have to disconnect, if the obsession with playing a real person gets in the way of the movie at large. At the same time, we're all interested, as actors in trying to get as close to the real thing as we can, and whatever you can do in order to create that transformation feels fun and, for me, the furthest I can get away from myself is fun. It's all part of the costume, the accent, and all that stuff. It's about trying to get close without it being a detriment to the point of view of the story that you're trying to tell.” TryingRealFunTransformationPoint Of ViewObsessionGet Away Author:Joel Edgerton
“The truth about being a writer is you do not choose the stories you tell, but stories choose you. You do not choose, therefore, characters either. Novels are like dreams you dream with your eyes open; they are books which appear in your head with the same apparent immediateness as they appear in your dreams at night. A writer always writes their obsessions and the truth is that all throughout life we end up writing the same thing in different ways.” WritingBookDifferentCharacterDreamEyeNightNovelTruth IsObsession Author:Rosa Montero
“There's another little vision in my life, going into a restaurant in New York years ago: All the women are sitting in their little strapless dresses with their cleavage, and there's this one woman in a sleeveless turtleneck and pants. And I can tell you that every man in that restaurant looked at that woman's arms. It was hypnotizing when everything was covered up. Just the face, the conversation - and you see the arms. And the arms and the hands become an obsession. I like that.” MenVisionObsession Author:Tomas Maier
“When you're writing - when I'm writing anyway - I'm writing out of different kinds of preoccupations and obsessions, different forms of drivenness, and so you're really hostage those while writing. I am, anyway. And it's only when you finally take the finished thing out of the furnace that you see what it was that went into the making of the thing.” WritingKindDifferentObsessionDifferent KindsHostage Author:W. S. Di Piero
“I think young people are aware, more than when I was young. There is such an obsession in the media of young people, about their beauty. The magazines and the fashion, all these kinds of things. They know that, and they use this power.” PeopleThinkingKindFashionObsession Author:Francois Ozon
“Most little children's obsessions are robots and Barbie dolls. My obsession as a kid was the Versace house. I used to save up my pocket money to buy Versus shirts. I was that obsessed!” KidsHouseObsessionObsessedShirtsBarbieVersace Author:Riccardo Tisci
“These were always obsessions of mine, even as a very young child. These were things that interested me as the years went on. My friends were more preoccupied with social issues - issues such as abortion, racial discrimination, and Communism - and those issues just never caught my interest. Of course they mattered to me as a citizen to some degree...but they never really caught my attention artistically.” ChildrenInterestAttentionDiscriminationObsessionCommunismAbortionSocial IssuesRacial Discrimination Author:Woody Allen
“Maybe because English is my second language, maybe I just translate mundane clichés from the Welsh language and they sound original in English. I am going through a bit of an obsession with bad puns. I am hoping I'll grow out of it. Maybe it's just a phase.” LanguageObsessionTranslateMundanePunWelsh Author:Gruff Rhys
“I believe everything is autobiographical. If it's not strictly about you, it's your peers, your obsessions, things that make you angry, or things that you've been watching or obsessing about. Preoccupying you for reasons you don't necessarily know, but it's about you. It says a lot about you. It's like when someone tells you their dream and you sit there going, "Do you realize how much you're revealing about yourself right now?" It's kind of embarrassing.” BelieveKindReasonDreamI BelieveRealizingObsessionAbout YourselfEmbarrassing Author:Steve Toltz
“I feel that there are two kinds of writers. I feel that there are writers who are storytellers and then there are those just working out their obsessions. I think I'm a combination. I think, at least for these books, I'm going with fear. I've always been interested in fear. Fear is something I've dealt with in life, and I think it's the main motivating factor of everything, almost. From sex to politics.” ThinkingKindBookWork OutObsessionStoryteller Author:Steve Toltz
“Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.” ThinkingWritingSeriousLibraryGreedObsessionObsessedPrintDeck Author:Ricky Jay
“I'm interested in how memory and power come together in evil. These are obsessions of mine that appear throughout, like the theme of music. I know at some point or another one of my obsessions will emerge. You don't know how much I save in psychiatrist bills with this writing!” WritingTogetherEvilMemoriesObsessionPsychiatrist Author:Jaume Cabre
“I wrote the poems in Charms Against Lightning one by one, over almost a decade, and I did not write them toward any theme or narrative. But once I really got serious about putting together a book, I began to see that in fact there were themes across the poems, if only because my own obsessions had brought me back time and again to the same ground. I realized that any ordering of the poems would determine how those themes developed over the manuscript, and how the collection's dramatic conflicts were resolved.” WritingBookTogetherSeriousConflictDetermineI RealizedObsessionDramatic Author:James Arthur
“In my work, hair denotes the flow of life prior to being freed from pain. I fill the hair with human struggles such as deep-rooted anxieties, stubborn attachment to life, obsessions, and restrictions. Appearing fluid like a live organism, the hair symbolizes longevity and patience, but when it appears coarse, the hair expresses an energetic life force and freedom.” PainStruggleAnxietyObsessionLongevityStubbornEnergeticBeing Free Author:Hyon Gyon
“I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm unsure of what my life will be like. I mean, I have such an obsession with making movies that I probably will always do that. But sometimes my life can feel so suffocating, and then it can feel so massive, like I don't have a handle on it at all, and I don't know where it's going or what I'm going to do. Right now, I'm known for making movies. And I wonder if that's it. I don't know. It doesn't feel like it to me.” MeanSometimesWonderObsessionUnsureSuffocating Author:Dakota Johnson
“Almost all major scientific projects today are huge collaborations, yet we still have this public obsession with the idea of the individual scientific genius. One of my goals as a science communicator is to celebrate the collaborative dimensions of science, which I think will be critical for facing the ecological and resource challenges ahead. In a sense, we are all corals now.” ThinkingTodayIndividualGoalChallengesGeniusObsessionCelebrateCollaborationEcological Author:Margaret Wertheim
“The obsession with food filled my childhood - that's what happens when your parents are from a place or time where people really might starve. In America, my Jordanian father spent decades cooking professionally and pursuing his dream of a restaurant, and it was one of the central ways that he explained himself to his American children. Even though he's a passionate talker, he has a hell of a time with listening. His cooking gave him a way of having a conversation - which was a really interesting thing for a writer to look at.” PeopleChildrenDreamFatherParentInterestingHellChildhoodListeningCookingPassionateObsessionReally Interesting Author:Diana Abu-Jaber
“In Germany, they were very interested in talking about their past. I respect that, and I think they've done quite well. It's become a kind of obsession, as it bloody well should, when compared, for example, to France, which hasn't done anything. France has done no work about their part in transporting eighty thousand people to their deaths. They are still the guy in the leather jacket with the onion, who's a part of La Résistance. In fact, they collaborated, not resisted.” PeopleThinkingKindDonePastGuyObsessionBloody Author:Martin Amis
“Brian Eno records and music became a huge obsession of mine in college, in a way that a pop song can provide solace. I don't know if it's shallow or silly, but it meant so much to me.” SongCollegeMusic IsSillyObsessionShallowSolacePop Song Author:Greg Mottola
“The thing to remember about the Declaration of Independence and the profession of freedom is that it was written by people who were quite free and who were surrounded by people who were not free. The people who wrote the Declaration of Independence were ventriloquists really. The obsession with freedom makes no sense when it applies to them.” PeopleRememberIndependenceProfessionObsessionDeclarationDeclaration Of Independence Author:Jamaica Kincaid
“It's always something that interests me, crafting a really perfect pop gem, but it's not a lifelong obsession. I've kind of moved beyond it. I think I needed to get that out of my system, to exorcise.” ThinkingKindInterestPerfectMovedObsessionLifelongGems Author:Nicholas Thorburn
“Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless.” MeanDoeParticularOneselfCaughtEndlessObsessionMechanismTraps Author:Jacques Lacan