''Presumably all obsessions are extreme metaphors waiting to be born.''

''I would say that I quite consciously rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately setup an obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of the subject of the obsession. It’s like picking up an ashtray and staring so hard at it that one becomes obsessed by its contours, angles, texture, et cetera, and forgets that it is an ashtray—a glass dish for stubbing out cigarettes.'' 

J. G. Ballard interview (Paris Review 1984)

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2929/the-art-of-fiction-no-85-j-g-ballard