Maurice Sendak Quotes
American - Artist June 10, 1928 - May 8, 2012


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

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. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.
Maurice Sendak

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.
Maurice Sendak

There must be more to life than having everything.
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

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

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

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.
Maurice Sendak

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

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

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy.
Maurice Sendak

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

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.
Maurice Sendak

I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.
Maurice Sendak

I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels.
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 can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago.
Maurice Sendak

People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the disappointment in their voice.
Maurice Sendak

I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard.
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

When Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain... I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.
Maurice Sendak

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.
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

Grown-ups are afraid for children. It's not children who are afraid.
Maurice Sendak

I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly... and I want it to be for my brother.
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

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

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

It's no fun being lonely.
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

My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World.
Maurice Sendak

What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is.
Maurice Sendak

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.
Maurice Sendak

I remember how much - when I was a small boy I was taken to see a version of 'Peter Pan.' I detested it. I mean, the sentimental idea that anybody would want to remain a boy.
Maurice Sendak

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

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

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

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?
Maurice Sendak

I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.
Maurice Sendak

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.
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

As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.
Maurice Sendak

My work is not great, but it's respectable. I have no false illusions.
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

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

I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!
Maurice Sendak

I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children.
Maurice Sendak

Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown... There's something so hopelessly gross and vile about him it's hard to take him seriously.
Maurice Sendak

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

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

Kids are so shrewd.
Maurice Sendak

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal.
Maurice Sendak

We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do.
Maurice Sendak

I would infinitely prefer a daughter.
Maurice Sendak

Things come to you without you necessarily knowing what they mean.
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

My being gay was something of not great interest to me.
Maurice Sendak

I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.
Maurice Sendak

A book is a book is a book.
Maurice Sendak

I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man.
Maurice Sendak

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

I have a good life.
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 don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.
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 world is twice as crazy as it's ever been.
Maurice Sendak

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

I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?
Maurice Sendak

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.
Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children.
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

You can't write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.
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

'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father.
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 have a little tiny Emily Dickinson so big that I carry in my pocket everywhere. And you just read three poems of Emily. She is so brave. She is so strong. She is such a sexy, passionate, little woman. I feel better.
Maurice Sendak

I hate those e-books. They can not be the future... they may well be... I will be dead.
Maurice Sendak

I became a set designer for opera.
Maurice Sendak

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.
Maurice Sendak

Kids lead a very private life.
Maurice Sendak

I hate people.
Maurice Sendak

I feel extremely vulnerable.
Maurice Sendak

I feel like I don't have a lot of time left.
Maurice Sendak

You don't want to do something that's all terrifying.
Maurice Sendak

I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be.
Maurice Sendak

I didn't have much confidence in myself... never.
Maurice Sendak

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know.
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

I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets.
Maurice Sendak

Finding out that I was gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment.
Maurice Sendak

I was miserable as a kid.
Maurice Sendak

I don't need faith.
Maurice Sendak

I'm not a religious person.
Maurice Sendak

I'm not afraid of death.
Maurice Sendak

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

It dawned on me that art was the way I could survive.
Maurice Sendak

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

I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'
Maurice Sendak

My father belonged to a Jewish social club.
Maurice Sendak

I'm a lucky buck.
Maurice Sendak

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

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

My work is not great, but it's respectable.
Maurice Sendak

My therapies went on forever.
Maurice Sendak

I cry a lot because I miss people.
Maurice Sendak

My parents were very indiscrete.
Maurice Sendak

I stress character, character, character.
Maurice Sendak