Cultural Obsession Quotes

Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.

Michael Jackson is the ultimate traffic accident. People can't take their eyes off him.

Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

I'm very obsessed with pop culture of the mid-century and it goes hand-in-hand with the music that I studied in school.

We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it.

America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.

As I obsess about my ancient problems, I feel more like I'm sinking in quicksand than lighting a torch. I'm creating neither heat nor light, just the icky, perversely pleasurable squish of self-pity between my toes. My only defense is that I'm not the only one down here in the muck - our whole culture is doting on tales of personal tragedy.

Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

I mention my age because I find people in this country - women, not men, of course - women are so troubled by their age. There's a culture of youth, and it's a phony culture.

Two things in India are religion - one is cricket, and one is movies - these are two things.

One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.

Once they began doing 'Celebrity Apprentice,' apparently the audience wasn't that keen on the ordinary apprentice. That is probably the best indictment with our fascination with celebrity in our culture, which drives me crazy.

All English people have a fascination with Jack the Ripper. I don't know why, because it's so dreadful, but such a strange, endearing part of our culture. Morbid fascination sums it up.

I have looked warily at anthropologists ever since the day when I went to hear a great Greek scholar lecture on the Iliad, and listened for an hour to talk about bull-roarers and leopard-societies.

The fact that the Kardashians could be more popular than a show like 'Mad Men' is disgusting. It's a super disgusting part of our culture, but I still find it funny to make a joke about it.

Under popular culture's obsession with a naive inclusion, everything is O.K.

Our culture's obsession with vintage objects has rendered us unable to separate history from nostalgia. People want heart. They want a chaser of emotion with their aesthetics.

The Victorians, they were like the Germans in World War II. They could not stop recording details about their lives and their age.

Now most of 'Alice' isn't really a political social commentary, but I think a big message is here is that the culture we're involved in is fascinated with very quick fixes and instant gratification.

America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

Our culture's zeal for longevity reveals our incredible collective fear of death.

I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh.

Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.

I was highly aware, in writing [the book] ROOM, that there are unsavoury aspects to our interest in such cases, and I thought it was rather honester to include discussion of media representation in the novel itself than to cling to the high moral ground by merely avoiding scenes of voyeurism, for instance.

Everywhere you go somebody is on a diet. Everywhere you go in L.A. there is a no-carb option.