Living things aren't finished, you see. Everything they have ever been in contact with, each thought they have had, each person they have known - these things are still at work in them; nothing's finished.("The Graveyard Reader")

— Theodore Sturgeon

Once I had all the facts in, I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager, I didn't have any skills for writing as such, so it came out in 1500 words.

— Theodore Sturgeon

Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. Nothing it was designed to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.

— Theodore Sturgeon

Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all.

— Theodore Sturgeon

The alternative is to locate large deposits of specifically what we need, and extract it in bulk from the earth.”“That’s mining,” said the Drip. “There is a twenty-third century legend that youth was conscripted to work in mines. Anyhow, all young people were known as miners at one period.

— Theodore Sturgeon

The patriots poison themselves. The artists tend to decay, which is merely another kind of poison.

— Theodore Sturgeon

We are now in a position to determine just what sort of science fiction story this really is.

— Theodore Sturgeon

Why do you talk all the time?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question, but she cocked her head on one side and considered it carefully.“I think it’s ’cause I don’t know any big words, like you and Mummy,” she said, just in time to pull me out of my magazine again, “so I have to use lots and lots of little ones.

— Theodore Sturgeon

Why on earth do you carry a mirror around with you?” “It's purely a defensive device. We seldom quarrel, and this is one of the reasons. Can you imagine yourself getting all worked up and contorted and illogical and then coming face to face with yourself, looking at yourself exactly as you look to everyone else?

— Theodore Sturgeon

Writing is a communication.

— Theodore Sturgeon