Maurice Sendak Quotes

I'll eat you up! ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

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

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don't like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it's vapid, so they'll go for the hard words, they'll go for the hard concepts, they'll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things. ~ Maurice Sendak

The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day ... It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. ~ Maurice Sendak

If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people - I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images - the emotional quality - of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself - my dreaming life - still lives in the light of childhood. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

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

I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it. ~ 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

As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them. I still do. I continue to do what I did as a child; dream of books, make books and collect books. ~ 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

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

When I did 'Bumble-ardy,' I was so intensely aware of death. Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did 'Bumble-ardy'. I did 'Bumble-ardy' to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live, as any human being does. ~ 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

Let the wild rumpus start! ~ Maurice Sendak

Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing, but in a different way. It's no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind, if it has nothing to do with the text ... the artist must override the story, but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story. ~ Maurice Sendak

An illustration is an enlargement, and interpretation of the text, so that the reader will comprehend the words better. As an artist, you are always serving the words.
You must never illustrate exactly what is written. You must find a space in the text so that the pictures can do the work. Then you must let the words take over where words do it best. It's a funny kind of juggling act. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not afraid of death. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die ... or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back and do the best work that you ever did. BUT you have to take the dive and you do not know what the results will be. ~ Maurice Sendak

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

We're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

'James and the Giant Peach' magnificently starts out Dahl's career as a blithe and droll Bad Uncle corrupter and affirmer of youth. Its influence can be subsequently traced down the decades in everything from Maurice Sendak to Lemony Snicket to J. K. Rowling. ~ Paul Di Filippo

And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws. ~ Maurice Sendak

I said anything I wanted because I don't believe in children I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe that there's a demarcation. 'Oh you mustn't tell them that. You mustn't tell them that.' You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true. If it's true you tell them. ~ Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.' ~ Spike Jonze

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

I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

I think that if in your heart, you are seeking out a real puzzle, and you're not looking to frighten anybody, you're not looking to upset anybody, and you're looking to discuss a subject that you yourself went through when you were nine - you just don't remember the difficulties of one's own childhood. ~ Maurice Sendak

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 and Gretel, who throw their children out. They tell things about life which children know instinctively, and the pleasure and relief lie in finding these things expressed in language that children can live with. You can't eradicate these feelings – they exist and they're a great source of creative inspiration. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day; it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

Art has always been my salvation. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

If there's anything I'm proud of in my work
it's not that I draw better; there's so many better graphic artists than me
or that I write better, no. It's
and I'm not saying I know the truth, because what the hell is that? But what I got from Ruth and Dave, a kind of fierce honesty, to not let the kid down, to not let the kid get punished, to not suffer the child to be dealt with in a boring, simpering, crushing-of-the-spirit kind of way. ~ Maurice Sendak

I am in love with the world. ~ Maurice Sendak

I was miserable as a kid. ~ Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood - the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see. ~ Maurice Sendak

And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot ~ 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

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

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

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

An illustrator in my own mind - and this is not a truth of any kind - is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that's what you hold on to, and that's what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there. ~ Maurice Sendak

Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a style is to lose all flexibility. If you have only one style, then you're going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. Lots of styles permit you to walk in and out of books. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.
As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it's not the work of the imagination. ~ Maurice Sendak

Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do. ~ Maurice Sendak

One of the few graces of getting old-and God knows there are few graces-is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me. ~ Maurice Sendak

Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do. ~ Maurice Sendak

I would infinitely prefer a daughter. ~ Maurice Sendak

Each month is gay, Each season nice, When eating Chicken soup With rice ~ Maurice Sendak

Kids are so shrewd. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world. ~ Maurice Sendak

I'm not a religious person. ~ Maurice Sendak

I mean, being a child was being a child, was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind. So I didn't want to be a child. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

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

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

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

Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys and women more than men. And there's no doubt about that. We just don't like to think about it. Certainly the men don't like to think about it. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

If life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

I became a set designer for opera. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat. ~ 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

Inside all of us is HOPE. Inside all of us is FEAR. Inside all of us is ADVENTURE. Inside all of us is A WILD THING. ~ Maurice Sendak

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

Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody – only children. A letter from a seven-year-old boy encourages me to think that I have reached children as I had hoped. He wrote: 'How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive my sister and I want to spend the summer there. Please answer soon.' I did not answer that question, for I have no doubt that sooner or later they will find their way, free of charge. ~ Maurice Sendak