Maurice Sendak Quotes

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

~ Maurice Sendak

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...

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ 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

. . .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 best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

It is sometimes hard to be a family.

~ Maurice Sendak

But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go - we’ll 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 terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

[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 their lives and that they can perceive only as as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction.

~ 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

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

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

William Blake really is important my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

~ Maurice Sendak

Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

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

~ Maurice Sendak

To get a child's trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. They're so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.

~ Maurice Sendak

Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.

~ 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 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