Top 100 Sendak Quotes
#1. I grew up with probably three different authors having a seminal influence on my childhood, Dr. Seuss being one and Maurice Sendak being another. That was my parents, who exposed me to their stories. That's how I was introduced to the whole idea of not just reading, but storytelling in general.
Christopher Meledandri
#2. There's a book called 'Where The Wild Things Are,' by American writer Maurice Sendak ... it really is the most sublime book. It's a picture book, but it works at so many levels, and it's fantastic.
Graeme Base
#3. I've always loved the wild rumpus in 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak, because the words disappear, the pictures take up the whole page, and we move forward in the story by turning the pages.
Brian Selznick
#4. Ursula Nordstrom was famous for finding artists in unlikely places. Maurice Sendak was a window designer, and she just came across one of his windows. Everyone was looking to find a talent.
Peter Sis
#5. Sendak is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his death bed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendak. "It can be done." He lifts his eyebrows to two peaks. "If you're William Blake and totally crazy.
Maurice Sendak
#6. My perfectly measured ingredients should have mixed and turned into an epic lava. Instead it looks like an outtake from an old sci-fi movie. Green goo has killed my volcano. My chance to win the science fair at Sendak has been slimed!
Angela Cervantes
#7. 'James and the Giant Peach' magnificently starts out Dahl's career as a blithe and droll Bad Uncle corrupter and affirmer of youth. Its influence can be subsequently traced down the decades in everything from Maurice Sendak to Lemony Snicket to J. K. Rowling.
Paul Di Filippo
#8. Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.
Anthony Browne
#9. Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.'
Spike Jonze
#10. Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.
Maurice Sendak
#11. The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood - the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.
Maurice Sendak
#13. 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
#14. Each month is gay, Each season nice, When eating Chicken soup With rice
Maurice Sendak
#15. My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
Maurice Sendak
#16. There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.
Maurice Sendak
#17. 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
#20. I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.
Maurice Sendak
#21. Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.
Maurice Sendak
#22. I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.
Maurice Sendak
#23. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.
Maurice Sendak
#24. I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.
Maurice Sendak
#26. 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
#27. Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.
Maurice Sendak
#28. I didn't have much confidence in myself ... never.
Maurice Sendak
#29. 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
#31. Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.
Maurice Sendak
#33. I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day; it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.
Maurice Sendak
#34. 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
#35. I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die.
Maurice Sendak
#36. I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets.
Maurice Sendak
#37. May I ask what you have in your black leather bag with gold buckles?"
"Everything." They were climbing a narrow staircase. Rhoda stopped to look when Jennie opened her bag.
"You do have everything."
"I have even more," Jennie said modestly. "Two windows that I left at home.
Maurice Sendak
#38. 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
#39. You don't want to do something that's all terrifying.
Maurice Sendak
#40. Children are the best living audience in the world because they are so thoroughly honest.
Maurice Sendak
#41. 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
#42. 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
#44. I will lead you by a shorter way. You will be with your mother soon, but you will find the going hard.
Maurice Sendak
#45. 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
#46. 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
#48. 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
#49. There's a mystery there, a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me.
Maurice Sendak
#50. That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.
Maurice Sendak
#51. I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly ... and I want it to be for my brother.
Maurice Sendak
#52. And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
Maurice Sendak
#53. Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern,
Maurice Sendak
#54. 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
#55. My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative.
Maurice Sendak
#57. Oh, please don't go - we'll eat you up - we love you so!
Maurice Sendak
#58. Inside all of us is HOPE. Inside all of us is FEAR. Inside all of us is ADVENTURE. Inside all of us is A WILD THING.
Maurice Sendak
#59. I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels.
Maurice Sendak
#60. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. I have nothing now but praise for my life.
Maurice Sendak
#61. You can't write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.
Maurice Sendak
#62. To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.
Maurice Sendak
#64. I think there is something barbaric in children, and it's missing in lots of books for them because we don't like to think of it. We want them to be happy [but] childhood is a very tough time.
Maurice Sendak
#66. 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
#67. Never fear. When this rose blooms, you will be with me again.
Maurice Sendak
#68. We've educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate.
Maurice Sendak
#69. Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know.
Maurice Sendak
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. Life has only gotten better personally for me as I've gotten older. I mean, being young was such a gross waste of time. I was just such a miserable, miserable person.
Maurice Sendak
#73. I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
Maurice Sendak
#74. Childhood is a tricky business. Usually something goes wrong.
Maurice Sendak
#75. When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I am telling the children.
Maurice Sendak
#76. Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.
Maurice Sendak
#77. There must be more to life than having everything!
Maurice Sendak
#78. You can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely.
Maurice Sendak
#79. Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books,
Maurice Sendak
#80. It is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage. That you lose hope. I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day. I'm pretty good. I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk.
Maurice Sendak
#81. If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.
Maurice Sendak
#82. There's so much more to a book than just the reading.
Maurice Sendak
#83. I hate, loathe and despise schools.School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way.
Maurice Sendak
#86. I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.
Maurice Sendak
#87. 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
#88. 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
#91. I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.
Maurice Sendak
#94. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.
Maurice Sendak
#95. 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
#98. I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.
Maurice Sendak
#99. I said anything I wanted because I don't believe in children I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe that there's a demarcation. 'Oh you mustn't tell them that. You mustn't tell them that.' You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true. If it's true you tell them.
Maurice Sendak
#100. I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep.
Maurice Sendak
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