Obsessed Quotes - Page 28

• I'd like to understand why it seems normal to look at astonishing achievements made by unapproachably ambitious, luminously pious, strangely obsessed artists, and toss them off with a few wry comments.

  James Elkins

  Artist, Achievement, Ambitious

  James Elkins (2005). “Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings”, p.6, Routledge

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• Sometimes in the history of art it is possible to describe a period or a generation of artists as having been obsessed by a particular problem.

  Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

  Art, Generations, Problem

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• I'm obsessed with plastic. I like the syntheticness.

  Mika

  Plastic

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• A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.

  Edward Abbey

  Miserable, Hard

  Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

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• Being obsessed by goals is bad for you. You should set goals, even ambitious goals, regularly. But focus on them only to the extent that they give you direction.

  Srikumar Rao

  Giving, Goal, Focus

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• The life of a savage is beset by glowering terrors: from birth to death he lives in an animated world; where the sun and the stars, sticks, stones, and rivers are obsessed with his fate. He is busy all the time in a ritual designed to propitiate the abounding jealousies of nature. For his world is magical and capricious, the simplest thing is occult.

  Walter Lippmann

  Stars, Fate, Rivers

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.37, Harvard University Press

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• It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.

  Cesare Pavese

  Desire, Want, Tests

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.106, Transaction Publishers

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• Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Men, Nihilism

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, pp. 157-158, 1987.

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• That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

  Truman Capote

  Art, Jobs, Blood

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.172, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

  Robertson Davies

  Art, Teaching, Thinking

  Robertson Davies (1993). “Fortune, My Foe and Eros at Breakfast”, p.8, Dundurn

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• Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.

  Philip Pullman

  Hate, Dust, Different

  Philip Pullman (2007). “The subtle knife”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.

  J. L. Austin

  Truth Is, Minimum, Illusory

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 130), 1979.

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• The post-war "publish or perish" tyranny must end. The profession has become obsessed with quantity rather than quality. [...] One brilliant article should outweigh one mediocre book.

  Camille Paglia

  War, Book, Quality

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Arion, Third Series, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• It is strange, is it not, how the more strenuously we deny the importance of race in human affairs, the more obsessed with it and the touchier on the subject we grow.

  Anthony Daniels

  Race, Strange, Affair

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• Personally I don't think there's any real intrinsic difference between comic books, movies, theatre, novels. I know there's sure to be some differences of some sorts. I've worked on novels, films, and video games, and in an adaptation, I guess one of the issues is that I have to be in love with the thing I'm adapting before I do it. So that can cause a problem. You can be too scared of it. You could be too reverential. But at the same time you want to try to capture this thing that you're obsessed by. You're fixated for a reason. What's the reason? You try to get ahold of it.

  Alex Garland

  Real, Book, Thinking

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• At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could've taken. I don't think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

  Ben Gibbard

  Regret, Taken, Thinking

  "The Meaning of Life". www.pastemagazine.com. April 10, 2008.

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• When I was a kid, I was obsessed with different planets in the solar system, and I used to create, for every single planet, a different alien race with a certain kind of pet, a certain kind of house, a certain kind of water system, and everything.

  James Gunn

  Kids, Race, Water

  Source: collider.com

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• I was obsessed with the idea of sitting next to someone and playing a game that we were both competing in, and we were also competing with the computer. That was mind-blowing to me at that time. It was just so cool to think about the computer being able to play with us, and then also [for] us to compete.

  Robin Hunicke

  Thinking, Games, Play

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Hollywood is obsessed with police stories.

  Ice Cube

  Police, Hollywood, Stories

  Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. April 15, 2014.

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• I think, on both sides of the camera or the novel: Distraction. I'm obsessed with: Can I get this actress or my third act to work? I'm distracted. I'm interested in that so I don't sit home and think, "Gee, life is meaningless. We're all going to die. The universe is pulling apart at breakneck speed."

  Woody Allen

  Home, Thinking, Sides

  "Filmmaking Woody Allen's way". Interview, www.stuff.co.nz. June 25, 2012.

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• Experimental science is a craft and an art, and part of the art is knowing when to end a fruitless experiment. There is a danger of becoming obsessed with a fruitless experiment even if it goes nowhere.

  Martin Lewis Perl

  Art, Two, Knowing

  "Physics, 1991-1995" by G sta Ekspong, 1997.

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• Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes than immediate ones. This would especially be true of overeducated people, who are capable of thinking past the immediate, of becoming obsessed by the remote. It's the old stuff, the conflicts we've never come to terms with, that sneaks up on us, half forgotten, insisting upon action.

  Richard Russo

  Believe, Past, Thinking

  "Straight Man". Book by Richard Russo, 1997.

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• Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, Hands, Years

  "Mapping Ideology" by Slavoj Žižek, p.1, 1994.

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• a caring that gains only when losing; an obsessed desire to be bound, for love , in jail ; a capitulation to the one you've conquered yourself; a devotion to your own assassin every single day.

  Luis de Camoes

  Caring, Jail, Desire

  Luís de Camões (2008). “Selected Sonnets: A Bilingual Edition”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

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• I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies -- NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science -- but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Real, Lying, Believe

  Buzz Aldrin (2009). “Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon”, p.165, A&C Black

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