A biography for Maurice Sendakhasn’t been written yet.
“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'm an illustrator. I have to accept my role.”
“I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.”
“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 grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.”
“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.”
“I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.”
“We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal.”
“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?”
“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.”
“The world is twice as crazy as it's ever been.”
“I didn't have much confidence in myself... never.”
“There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.”
“In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.”
“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.”
“What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is.”
“Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.”
“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.”
“Yes, there have to be places for safe wonderful stories.”
“I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.”