When others' obsessions are not ours, we are sad for them, and we talk of how empty their lives will be if they don't achieve their empty goal: the gymnastics prize, the firm partnership. But there is a monomania in which it is the focus, the sense of transport, that is the real pleasure.
Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
obsession