Maurice Sendak famous quotes

And the walls became the world all around.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Wall #World

I think that if in your heart, you are seeking out a real puzzle, and you're not looking to frighten anybody, you're not looking to upset anybody, and you're looking to discuss a subject that you yourself went through when you were nine - you just don't remember the difficulties of one's own childhood.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Real #Heart #Thinking

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

#Children #Mean #Taming

I really don't like the city anymore. You get pushed and harassed and people grope you. It's too tumultuous. It's too crazy.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Crazy #Cities #People

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Inspirational #Funny #Beauty

One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Real #Artist #World

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Mother #Children #Boys

All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Brother #Character #Kids

I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Live Your Life #Wish #Good Things

There must be more to life than having everything.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Life #Environmental #Climate Change

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

#Stars #Kids #Enjoy

And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!
-- Maurice Sendak

#Max

There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Beautiful #World #Ready

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

#People #Missing #Cry

Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Moving #Reality

Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!
-- Maurice Sendak

#Love You #Please

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

#Children #Book #Kids

I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Crazy #Essence #Likes

You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Book #Writing

And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Eye #Teeth #Claws

Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And 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. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Art #Believe #Animal

I’m not Hans Christian Andersen. 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

#Christian #Kids #Climbing

I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Notebook #Children #Years

I never can satisfy some need in me to achieve something of incredible hight. For my sake. It puzzles me deeply. And it sours my life. So there is a permanent dissatisfaction.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Sake #Needs #Incredibles

Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Passion #Creative #Driving

Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern,
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Childhood #Theme

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 what's happening to me.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Creative #Grace #Noses

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

#Book #Reading

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

#Mother #Children #Sometimes

I hate [ebooks]. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Sex #Hate #Book

Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Kids #Thinking #Should

There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen
-- Maurice Sendak

#Want #Should

And [he] sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him and it was still hot
-- Maurice Sendak

#Night #Years #Waiting

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

#Believe #Wonderful #Melville

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Thinking #Blue #Sky

Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Writing #Imagination #Stories

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

#Lonely #Kings #Max

Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Kings #World #Far Away

. . .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

#Children #Mean #Frustration

It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Thinking #Layers

Children are the best living audience in the world because they are so thoroughly honest.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #World #Honest

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

#Believe #Men #Typical

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Art #Live Your Life #Stories

We’ve educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Thinking #Spontaneity

I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Writing

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.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Believe #Moving

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Children #Real #Thinking

As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them. I still do. I continue to do what I did as a child; dream of books, make books and collect books.
-- Maurice Sendak

#Dream #Children #Book

there is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality
-- Maurice Sendak

#Reality #Fantasy