Quotes by Maurice Sendak

Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!

I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.

[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction.

so that it isnt upsetting to anybody. Its something weve always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psychotic mothers, like those of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, who throw their children out. They tell things about life which children know instinctively, and the pleasure and relief lie in finding these things expressed in language that children can live with. You cant eradicate these feelings – they exist and theyre a great source of creative inspiration.

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. Youre going to trip over that for a good part of your life.

I remember my own childhood vividly..I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustnt let adults know I knew. It would scare them. (In conversation with Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker, September 27, 1993)

Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing but in a different way. Its no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind if it has nothing to do with the text. . . the artist must override the story but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story.

William Blake really is important my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

There must be more to life than having everything.

There must be more to life than having everything!

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

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

I became a set designer for opera. Im a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.

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

To get a childs trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. Theyre so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.

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

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. Theres a cruelty to childhood, theres an anger.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and Im dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. Theyre nowhere. I know theyre nowhere and they dont exist, but if nowhere means thats where they are, thats where I want to be.

“The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.”

“I have nothing now but praise for my life. Im not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I cant stop them. They leave me and I love them more...”