Quotes by Maurice Sendak

“And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”

“I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them”

“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more...”

“Sendak is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his death bed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendak. "It can be don...”

“The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.”

“. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as b...”

“And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”

“Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice”

“It is sometimes hard to be a family.”

“You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them. ”

“But the wild things cried, Oh please dont go - well eat you up - we love you so!And Max said, No!The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrib...”

“Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!”

“I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.”

“[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of...”

“so that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psychotic mothers, like those of Snow White and Hansel...”

“It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing...”

“I remember my own childhood vividly..I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them. (In conversation with Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker, September 27, 1993)”

“I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.”

“I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.”