Maurice Sendak Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  "Interview: Why Is Maurice Sendak So Incredibly Angry?". Interview with Leonard S. Marcus, Parenting Magazine (October 1993); later quoted in Leonard S. Marcus "Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book" (p. 181), 2002.

  9 Copy quote

• Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.

  Maurice Sendak

  Smart, Writing, Kids

  "Maurice Sendak Sheds Moonlight on a Dark Tale". www.nytimes.com. 1993.

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Boston Globe interview, January 4, 1987.

  11 Copy quote

• I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.

  Maurice Sendak

  Intelligent, Pigs, Looks

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• Because love is so enormous, the only thing you can think of doing is swallowing the person that you love entirely.

  Maurice Sendak

  Love Is, Thinking, Swallowing

  5 Copy quote

• Herman Melville said that artists have to take a dive and either you hit your head on a rock and you split your skull and you die … or that blow to the head is so inspiring that you come back and do the best work that you ever did. BUT you have to take the dive and you do not know what the results will be.

  Maurice Sendak

  Artist, Blow, Rocks

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Maurice Sendak (1964). “Where the wild things are”, HarperCollins Publishers

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Interview with Emma Brockes, www.believermag.com. November/December 2012.

  8 Copy quote

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Love You, Wild Things, Please

  "Looking Back On 'Wild Things' With Maurice Sendak". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 23, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• 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, Adults

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  "Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger". Interview With Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. September 26, 2006.

  10 Copy quote

• An illustrator in my own mind - and this is not a truth of any kind - is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that's what you hold on to, and that's what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.

  Maurice Sendak

  Falling In Love, Believe, Book

  "Sendak on Sendak". Interview at Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, 2007/2008.

  13 Copy quote

• Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.

  Maurice Sendak

  Art, Fantasy, Life Is

  4 Copy quote

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Parent, Wanted

  "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen, www.nytimes.com. September 9, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Mother, Children, Sometimes

  "Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak" by Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak" by Noel Murray, tv.avclub.com. October 19, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  "'Fresh Air' Remembers Author Maurice Sendak". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, nhpr.org. June 10, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

• If there's any advice I have to give, I would say it's that. If you're looking for a way to get closer to your kids, there ain't no better way than to grab 'em and read. And if you put them in front of a computer or a TV, you are abandoning them. You are abandoning them because they are sitting on a couch or a floor and they may be hugging a dog, but they ain't hugging you.

  Maurice Sendak

  Dog, Kids, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw.

  Maurice Sendak

  Kids, Draws

  Source: www.hbook.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Food, World

  Maurice Sendak (1964). “Where the wild things are”, HarperCollins Publishers

  7 Copy quote

• 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, Believe

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Needs, Purpose, Rooms

  "NOW" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. March 12, 2004.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

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