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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
7b8a6fa The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive. love obsession Rick Riordan
ece7fcd I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it. slavery obsession Sylvia Plath
4e20008 If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave. love obsession Emily Brontë
4b1330a When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love. love love-struck obsession J.K. Rowling
829e838 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. obsession Charlotte Brontë
fb0c02a Don't be self-conscious, if I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it. edward-cullen obsession Stephenie Meyer
ba305be 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. romance misery obsession W. Somerset Maugham
505c763 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. obsession James Frey
f10ec92 All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered. obsession Cassandra Clare
7d72880 You become what you think about all day long. inspirational obsession Ralph Waldo Emerson
117e428 "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!" hate death love thwarted malediction obsession Emily Brontë
e69353f 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. want obsession Sara Gruen
11ee596 I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference selfish-love obsession Ayn Rand
2349f81 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. love obsession J.R. Ward
0b4a59e 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. obsession Stephenie Meyer
365d135 From the first time I saw you, I've belonged to you completely. I still do. If you want me. -Jace love obsession Cassandra Clare
4f282dc Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. passion obsession Jeanette Winterson
f2efa18 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. slavery sadness love homes sherlock-holmes love-at-first-sight obsession Arthur Conan Doyle
9b67686 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. relations obsession Paulo Coelho
27e9e44 "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" love kev win obsession Lisa Kleypas
4c41c00 Never in my life had I been more frustrated. Go figure it wouldn't be with a human but a freaking alien. At least I now knew that the male species were asses no matter what planet they hailed from. jennifer-l-armentrout obsession Jennifer L. Armentrout
9a9425b 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. passion obsession Jeanette Winterson
4ccfcea I wonder if whoever invented World of Warcraft realizes it's practice for sociopaths. obsessions sociopath lisa-scottoline obsession Lisa Scottoline
fdeb6c4 Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders. food obsession Marya Hornbacher
907be44 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. love the-collector john-fowles despair obsession John Fowles
2ae91a7 My whole life was about her, what if her whole life wasn't all about me? obsession Jodi Picoult
7f7c7b1 She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong. obsession Jodi Picoult
06c6381 "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)" obsession Orhan Pamuk
1701523 The thought of her gave me such a continual anguish that I could no more forget her than an aching tooth. It was involuntary, hopeless, compulsive. For years she had been the first thing I remembered when I woke up, the last thing that drifted through my mind as I went to sleep, and during the day she came to me obtrusively, obsessively, always with a painful shock. pain compulsion anguish compulsive hopeless obsession unrequited-love memory Donna Tartt
dbcec80 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. obsession Peter S. Beagle
7d83676 To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book -- to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor -- to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire -- to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower -- to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind -- to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in -- Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation. monomania obsession Edgar Allan Poe
39c6675 But does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end-and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy? To try to make some meaning out of all this seems unbelievably quaint. Maybe I only see a pattern because I've been staring too long. But then again, to paraphrase Boris, maybe I see a pattern because it's there. joy meaning doomed pattern obsession Donna Tartt
f1873a0 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. funny spying obsession Julia Quinn
d9245e5 She hates everything that is not what she longs for. passion mania obsession George Eliot
c34d980 "Luc blinked innocently. That little fuck. "I gave you a piece of opal and a Luxen to nom-nom on." jennifer-l-armentrout luc obsession Jennifer L. Armentrout
725abea It's similar to the way you feel cuddling an infant or a kitten, when you want to squeeze it so hard you'd kill it... obsession Zoë Heller
d080164 Sylvia Plath is there for me when actual living people upon who I have depended upon my whole life, are not. What I mean to say is, without her words, I'd be exponentially more messed up than I am already. fangirling identify-with the-bell-jar sylvia-plath obsession Arlaina Tibensky
1b36dba 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... single-mindedness vampire obsession Terry Pratchett
df40635 "It's nothing serious," he said. "It's just an obsession." obsession Mary Gaitskill
4eb0978 We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was in the wound, and the wound remained ever open passion love self-destructive passionate-love passionate fierceness young-love obsession Vladimir Nabokov
87c3b5e That's when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn't bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn't any such thing as help in this world. fear helpless psychosis help obsession Ryū Murakami
07ba34a Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. passion love obsessive-love lolita obsession Vladimir Nabokov
c4ceedd I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her. There was an instability in it, a sickness. I was seeing things that weren't there. I was only one step away from some trailer park loner stalking a girl he'd spotted in the mall. For the truth of it was: Pippa and I saw each other maybe twice a year; we e-mailed and texted, though with no great regularity; when she was in town we loaned each other books and went to the movies; we were friends; nothing more. My hopes for a relationship with her were wholly unreal, whereas my ongoing misery, and frustration, were an all-too-horrible reality. Was groundless, hopeless, unrequited obsession any way to waste the rest of my life? grief loss relationship reality past hope delusional delusional-love unreal loner delusion save hunger stalking misery hopeless frustration obsession waste unrequited-love sickness Donna Tartt
d2e8459 "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." loneliness mind depression despair obsession art-creation concentration thought mental-health Don DeLillo
94d77b9 Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession. quest search obsession Tahir Shah
2c9ce06 I am the scourge of God insanity obsession Peter Ackroyd
03fde30 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? obsessed obsession Herman Melville
04fd222 "There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]." "Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations... like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images..." "What is this one obsession?" "I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it." "There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'" "Inside the rain?" "When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain... as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well." "It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue..." -- rain themes obsession Jonathan Cott
a4b25b4 You know not, yet, the sort of love that strikes like a lightning bold; that clutches hold of you by the heart, as irrevocably as death; that becomes the lodestar by which you steer the rest of your life. true-love passion love obsessive-love juliet-marillier passionate obsession Juliet Marillier
bfc80e1 Passion out of passion's obstacles. passion obsession Jeanette Winterson
66f1374 I would fight of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. obsessed obsessions possessiveness obsession Vladimir Nabokov
54bc618 All scholars are a bit mad. All obsessions are dangerous. madness academia maud-bailey scholarship obsession A.S. Byatt
eb3033b What big eyes you have. Eyes of an incomparable luminosity, the numinous phosphorescence of the eyes of lycanthropes. The gelid green of your eyes fixes my reflective face; It is a preservative, like a green liquid amber; it catches me. I am afraid I will be trapped in it for ever like the poor little ants and flies that stuck their feet in resin before the sea covered the Baltic. He winds me into the circle of his eye on a reel of birdsong. There is a black hole in the middle of both your eyes; it is their still centre, looking there makes me giddy, as if I might fall into it. obsession Angela Carter
dbc7899 This form of love is like the pain of childbirth: so intense it's hard to remember afterwards, passion love intense love-hurts obsession Margaret Atwood
2cea6c7 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. epic obsession Herman Melville
ff32ec8 Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him. madness past undoing study mystery obsession H.P. Lovecraft
27301c5 By trying to export myself into a place that didn't fully exist I asked works of art to bear my expectation that they could be better than life, that they could redeem life. In fact, I believe they are, and do. My life is dedicated to that belief. But still, I asked too much of them: I asked them also to be both safer than life and fuller, a better family. That they couldn't give. At the depths I'd plumb them, so many perfectly sufficient works of art would become thin, anemic. I sucked the juice out of what I loved until I found myself in a desert, sucking rocks for water. reality truth too-much-affection too-much-of-a-good-thing what-you-love regret obsession Jonathan Lethem
de194a5 Insecurity of the spirit demands completeness elsewhere. procedure obsession ritual Peter Ackroyd
952965e 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. focus obsession Susan Vreeland
88025a4 I needed them, sure, and we can all argue about the moment when the balance tipped and I needed them so much that I would hurt. But you can't pretend they didn't need me too, each in his or her way. They wouldn't necessarily have admitted it - except Reza - but you can't tell me they didn't love me. The heart knows. The body knows. When I was with Sirena, or Reza, or Skandar, the air moved differently between us; time passed differently; words or gestures meant more than themselves. If you've never had this experience-but who has not been visited by love, laughing?-then you can't understand. And if you have, you don't need me to say another word. obsession Claire Messud
cf60c36 Over and over I played her favorite Arvo Part, as a way of being with her; and she had only to mention recently read novel for me to grab it up hungrily, to be inside her thoughts, a sort of telepathy obsession Donna Tartt
95906b4 I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't find your life uninteresting, as Rodman does. I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing. Having no future of my own, why shouldn't I look forward to yours. writing past obsession Wallace Stegner
9bbd961 I had possessed her - and she never knew it. lust obsession Vladimir Nabokov
48f5e08 It seems to me that evil is a kind of ultimate greed, a greed that is so all-encompassing that it can't ever see anything lovely, rare, or precious without wanting to possess it. A greed so total that if it can't possess these things, it will destroy them rather than chance that someone else might have them. And a greed so intense that even having these things never causes it to lessen one iota -- the lovely, the rare and the precious never affect it except to make it want them. greed destruction obsession evil Mercedes Lackey
3d884e0 Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals. materialism obsession Barbara W. Tuchman
93f7104 Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries--Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Cafe Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Cafe Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own. reading books love collecting-books knowledge obsession Stefan Zweig
65d1ac5 She looked at me again, and the sweet and shy Nicole disappeared. Her eyes blazed. she said. As Nicole raged, the hair on my neck prickled, because in her eyes, I saw madness. Obsession and madness. You're crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you? I started inching back. she said. She screamed, a long drawn-out shriek of feigned terror. madness insult nicole rant maya obsession Kelley Armstrong
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