Maurice Sendak Quotes
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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.
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I didn't have much confidence in myself... never.
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I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
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I became a set designer for opera.
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I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.
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It's no fun being lonely.
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My therapies went on forever.
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In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.
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My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World.
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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.
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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.
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I'm sick of 'Wild Things.'
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I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.
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I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children.
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Grown-ups are afraid for children. It's not children who are afraid.
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Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.
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My being gay was something of not great interest to me.
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As a kid, all I thought about was death.
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I hate people.
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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.
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There must be more to life than having everything.
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I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person.
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I don't need faith.
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That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?