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.Collection: Trust
In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.Collection: Anger
What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is.Collection: Respect
My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Truth
Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.Collection: Mom
I became a set designer for opera.
I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.
There must be more to life than having everything.
Finding out that I was gay when I was older was a shock and a disappointment.
I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children.
Yes, there have to be places for safe wonderful stories.
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.
I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago.
I hate people.
Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.
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.
You don't want to do something that's all terrifying.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm sick of 'Wild Things.'
'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father.
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.
I cry a lot because I miss people.
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.
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.
As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.
I refuse to lie to children.
My parents were very indiscrete.
It dawned on me that art was the way I could survive.
You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.
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.
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.
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.
You can't write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.
My work is not great, but it's respectable. I have no false illusions.
I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?
I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.
I hate those e-books. They can not be the future... they may well be... I will be dead.
There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.