Maurice Sendak Quotes
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I refuse to lie to children.
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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?
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Grown-ups are afraid for children. It's not children who are afraid.
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My parents were very indiscrete.
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As a kid, all I thought about was death.
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Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.
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I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!
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Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad.
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Finding out that I was gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment.
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I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.
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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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I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.
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My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World.
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I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children.
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It's no fun being lonely.
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You can't write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.
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I hate people.
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Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.
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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.
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I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
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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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I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
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All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.
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I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be.