"People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities"
About this Quote
The subtext is about power. We tell ourselves celebrity culture is harmless entertainment, but the "private lives" part is the tell: intimacy becomes a commodity, and the public feels entitled to it because the personality has benefited from visibility. Rush also slips in "great", a word that flatters and indicts. "Great public personalities" implies achievement and magnetism, yet it also hints at a trap: the bigger you are, the smaller your personal borders get.
Context matters here because Rush belongs to an era that saw the shift from magazine profiles to 24/7 surveillance-by-proxy: paparazzi, reality TV logic, and now social media, where stars are expected to self-expose on a schedule. The intent isn't moral panic; it's a clear-eyed diagnosis of a culture that prefers biography to art, confession to craft.
Quote Details
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rush, Geoffrey. (2026, January 17). People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-are-intrigued-and-fascinated-almost-70656/
Chicago Style
Rush, Geoffrey. "People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-are-intrigued-and-fascinated-almost-70656/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-are-intrigued-and-fascinated-almost-70656/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.







