Maurice Sendak Quotes
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I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels.
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Yes, there have to be places for safe wonderful stories.
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I'm a lucky buck.
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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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I would infinitely prefer a daughter.
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I'm not afraid of death.
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I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep.
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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.
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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.
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We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do.
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You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
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There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.
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I certainly don't spell it out. But they have to know it's possible things are bad. But, they are surrounded by people who love them and will protect them but cannot hide the fact that there is something bad.
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I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.
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Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences.
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I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man.
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I did not know how to paint a mural. I did not know how to prepare the surface. There was nobody from the Renaissance around who could advise me, and I did the best I could.
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We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal.
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I was miserable as a kid.
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I stress character, character, character.
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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?
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When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.
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I'm totally crazy, I know that.
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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 the splendid grace. And I think that is what’s happening to me.