"book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. it is not a hobby. those who do it must do it. those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
— Jeanette Winterson

"Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing."
— Elie Wiesel

"I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"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

"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 (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)

"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 (The Passion)

"Ester asked why people are sad.
"That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams."
Ester remarks that many people say to her, "You're lucky, you know what you want from life, whereas I don't even know what I want to do."
"Of course they know," replies the nomad. "How many people do you know who say: I've never done what I wanted, but then, at some point, they must have known what it was that they did want. As for life, it's just a story that other people tell us about the world and about how we should behave in the world.
"Even worse are those people who say: I'm happy because I'm sacrificing my life for those I love."
"And do you think that the people who love us want to see us suffering for their sakes? Do you think that love is a source of suffering?"
"To be honest, yes."
"Well, it shouldn't be."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

""When you have seen as much as life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love""
— Slughorn

"Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment."
— Claude Monet

"Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With 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 mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this
Being 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 (The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats)

"I vow I am, and always will be, constant and faithful in my love for you, Anais. Nothing you or anyone else does shall alter these feelings. I am forever loving, forever waiting, forever yearning...forever yours."
— Charlotte Featherstone (Addicted)

"All good research-whether for science or for a book-is a form of obsession."
— Mary Roach

"I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind, but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"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 (The Female Eunuch)

"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 (The Island of the Day Before)

"Passion out of passion's obstacles."
— Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)

"And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger."
— Ian Fleming (Moonraker)

"I began to understand that the most worthwhile obsession is an obsession that is actually independent of the object of fixation. The object is only borrowed as a pretext, a means, an environment, through which or in which the obsessed person can project his own eternal and essential hunger, thus fulfilling the requirements of death--the dissolution of the ego for something, anything, that exists independently outside of one's self. Perhaps that obsession should be controlled. At some point the most mundane catalyst, a skirt or fallen leaf, is enough to provoke a series of captivating chain reactions, while at another time much more important objects will inspire only an absurd indifference."
— Pham Thi Hoai