Maurice Bernard Sendak Quotes

There must be more to life than having everything! ~ Maurice Sendak

They leave me and I love them more. ~ Maurice Sendak

And the wild things...gnashed their terrible teeth ... ~ Maurice Sendak

I am in love with the world. ~ Maurice Sendak

Never fear. When this rose blooms, you will be with me again. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

I'll eat you up! ~ Maurice Sendak

Let the wild rumpus start! ~ Maurice Sendak

Messages are the death of an honest literary transaction with children ~ Maurice Sendak

I don't want to lose hope. ~ Maurice Sendak

Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift. ~ Maurice Sendak

And the walls became the world all around. ~ Maurice Sendak

It is sometimes hard to be a family. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not a religious person. ~ Maurice Sendak

Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm gay. I just didn't think it was anybody's business. ~ Maurice Sendak

There's so much more to a book than just the reading. ~ Maurice Sendak

I don't know how to write a children's book. ~ Maurice Sendak

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children. ~ Maurice Sendak

Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth! ~ Maurice Sendak

Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. ~ Maurice Sendak

As a kid, all I thought about was death. ~ Maurice Sendak

I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. Ripeness is all. ~ Maurice Sendak

'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father. ~ Maurice Sendak

Kids are so shrewd. ~ Maurice Sendak

The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'll eat you up I love you so. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it ~ Maurice Sendak

Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work. ~ Maurice Sendak

I feel like I don't have a lot of time left. ~ Maurice Sendak

Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things. ~ Maurice Sendak

And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start! ~ Maurice Sendak

The world is twice as crazy as it's ever been. ~ Maurice Sendak

Yes, there have to be places for safe wonderful stories. ~ Maurice Sendak

When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I am telling the children. ~ Maurice Sendak

Art has always been my salvation. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not afraid of death. ~ Maurice Sendak

It's no fun being lonely. ~ Maurice Sendak

I was miserable as a kid. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm sick of 'Wild Things.' ~ Maurice Sendak

I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist. ~ Maurice Sendak

I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did. ~ Maurice Sendak

My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm an illustrator. I have to accept my role. ~ Maurice Sendak

The distinctions of fine art bore me to death. ~ Maurice Sendak

My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony. ~ Maurice Sendak

I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive? ~ Maurice Sendak

Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice. ~ Maurice Sendak

My father belonged to a Jewish social club. ~ Maurice Sendak

All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. ~ Maurice Sendak

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. ~ Maurice Sendak

I have a good life. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm a lucky buck. ~ Maurice Sendak

I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction. ~ Maurice Sendak

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ~ Maurice Sendak

I became a set designer for opera. ~ Maurice Sendak

I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them. ~ Maurice Sendak

We've educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate. ~ Maurice Sendak

I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.' ~ Maurice Sendak

He's just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be king ~ Maurice Sendak

You can start making up any kind of story if you want to. ~ Maurice Sendak

What is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe. ~ Maurice Sendak

I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth. ~ Maurice Sendak

I hate, loathe and despise schools.School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not Hans Christian Anderson. Nobody's gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won't have it, okay? ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm totally crazy, I know that. ~ Maurice Sendak

And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it. ~ Maurice Sendak

We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do. ~ Maurice Sendak

What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is. ~ Maurice Sendak

I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children. ~ Maurice Sendak

My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health. ~ Maurice Sendak

Venturing back further, learning is so slow. Accomplishment is so slow. Experiencing and evaluating your experience is so slow. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels. ~ Maurice Sendak

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life. ~ Maurice Sendak

There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books. ~ Maurice Sendak

Children are the best living audience in the world because they are so thoroughly honest. ~ Maurice Sendak

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. ~ Maurice Sendak

F**k them is what I say. I hate those ebooks. They can not be the future. They may well be. I will be dead. I won't give a s**t. ~ Maurice Sendak

I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. ~ Maurice Sendak

I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die. ~ Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children. ~ Maurice Sendak

We're animals. We're violent. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep. ~ Maurice Sendak

You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life. ~ Maurice Sendak

I would infinitely prefer a daughter. ~ Maurice Sendak

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. ~ Maurice Sendak

I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent. ~ Maurice Sendak

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning. ~ Maurice Sendak

Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know why. I guess it's because that's where my heart is. ~ Maurice Sendak

There's a mystery there, a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me. ~ Maurice Sendak

Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination. ~ Maurice Sendak

I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid, working with my brother and making toy airplanes and a whole model of the World's Fair in 1939 out of wax. ~ Maurice Sendak

It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. I have nothing now but praise for my life. ~ Maurice Sendak

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 done." He lifts his eyebrows to two peaks. "If you're William Blake and totally crazy. ~ Maurice Sendak

To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult. ~ Maurice Sendak

We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything. ~ Maurice Sendak

May I ask what you have in your black leather bag with gold buckles?"
"Everything." They were climbing a narrow staircase. Rhoda stopped to look when Jennie opened her bag.
"You do have everything."
"I have even more," Jennie said modestly. "Two windows that I left at home. ~ Maurice Sendak