“Just think about it," he said softly. "You can do practically anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you from being alone."
"Shut up shut up...Everybody's alone."
He nodded. "But some people learn how to live with it.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“He slept like an animal, well and lightly, faced in the opposite direction from that of a man; for a man going to sleep is about to escape into it while animals are prepared to escape out of it.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Ask Baby can you be truly part of someone you love."
"He says only if you love yourself.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“It was spring, the part of spring where the bursting is done, the held-in pressures of desiccated sap-veins and gum-sealed buds are gone, and all the world’s in a rush to be beautiful.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that’s performing the logic.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“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, quote from More Than Human
“Love’s a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“The only thumbnail you’ll get from me is this: no one knows what’s really wrong with you but you; no one can find a cure for it but you; no one but you can identify it as a cure; and once you find it, no one but you can do anything about it.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Evelyn said, "What's it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?"
Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. "Love," she said at length. She swallowed. "It's a madness. It's bad.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“I got to my feet and looked around the room. Just a room, only the one door. I tiptoed towards it. When I passed Janie, she opened her eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.
‘None of your business,’ I told her. I went to the door as if I didn’t care, but I watched her. She didn’t do anything. The door was as solid tight closed as when I’d tried it before.
I went back to Janie. She just looked up at me. She wasn’t scared. I told her, ‘I got to go to the john.'
’‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Why’n’t you say so?’
'Suddenly I grunted and grabbed my guts. The feeling I had I can’t begin to talk about. I acted as if it was a pain, but it wasn’t. It was like nothing else that ever happened to me before. Something went splop on the snow outside.'
‘Okay,’ Janie said. ‘Go on back to bed.'
‘But I got to – ’
'You got to what?'
’Nothing.’ It was true. I didn’t have to go no place.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“He had an animal's maturity, in which the play of kittens and puppies no longer has a function. His spectrum lay between terror and contentment.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“He picked up three long fresh stalks of timothy and braided them together. He upended the scythe and thrust the handle deep enough into the soft earth so it would stand upright. He tied the braided grass to one of the grips and slipped the whetstone into the loops so it would stay. Then he walked off into the woods.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Waiting for the end of innocence. And an idiot is waiting for the end of idiocy too, but he’s ugly doing it. So each ends himself in the meeting, in exchange for a merging.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“He is credited with inventing the story of Spock’s sex life, as well as the famous Vulcan greeting, “Live long and prosper,” and (with Leonard Nimoy) its accompanying hand signal.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Anger was foreign to him; he had only felt it once before. But now it came, a wash of it that made him swell, that drained and left him weak. And he himself was the object of it. For hadn’t he known? Hadn’t he taken a name for himself, knowing that the name was a crystallization of all he had ever been and done? All he had ever been and done was alone. Why should he have let himself feel any other way?”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“no one knows what’s really wrong with you but you; no one can find a cure for it but you; no one but you can identify it as a cure; and once you find it, no one but you can do anything about it.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“Wrong. Wrong as a squirrel with feathers, or a wolf with wooden teeth; not injustice, not unfairness—just a wrongness that, under the sky, could not exist... the idea that such as he could belong to anything.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
Theodore Sturgeon
Born place: in Staten Island, New York, The United States
Born date February 26, 1918
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“[She] was a remarkable looking woman. Remarkable in that she wasn’t what most people would call beautiful. But she oozed a raw femaleness that I was certain made most women uncomfortable and sent men walking into walls. And when she smiled. Well. That was magic.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
“…Carlotta hovered over us as we devoured her meatballs, running her floury fingers over the backs of our chairs, then gently touching our heads, the napes of our necks. We pretended not to notice, ashamed in front of one another and ourselves to show that we drank in her nurturance as eagerly as her meat sauce.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Motherless Brooklyn
“Matsu gathered up what little was left of the food and wrapped it back up in the furoshiki. 'I followed you and the others down to the beach yesterday morning. I wondered if you might try to find your way to peace as she did.'
'I couldn't,' I began to cry, turning away in shame. Then Matsu leaned over close to my ear. He smelled of sweat and the earth as he whispered, 'It takes greater courage to live.”
― Gail Tsukiyama, quote from The Samurai's Garden
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”
― Rumi, quote from The Essential Rumi
“Sometimes, when you'd least expect it, the grief would chop your legs out from under you.”
― Emmy Laybourne, quote from Monument 14
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Studies in the Sermo...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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