Maurice Sendak Quotes

Enjoy the top 211 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Maurice Sendak.

“Were animals. Were violent. Were criminal.”
— Maurice Sendak —

There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen

— Maurice Sendak

“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”

— Maurice Sendak

“But the wild things cried, "Oh please don't go - we'll eat you up - we love you so!"
And Max said, "No!"
The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.”

— Maurice Sendak

“And the walls became the world all around.”

— Maurice Sendak

“From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”

— Maurice Sendak

“Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”

— Maurice Sendak

“Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!”

— Maurice Sendak

“If there's anything I'm proud of in my work
it's not that I draw better; there's so many better graphic artists than me
or that I write better, no. It's
and I'm not saying I know the truth, because what the hell is that? But what I got from Ruth and Dave, a kind of fierce honesty, to not let the kid down, to not let the kid get punished, to not suffer the child to be dealt with in a boring, simpering, crushing-of-the-spirit kind of way.”

— Maurice Sendak

I'll eat you up!

— Maurice Sendak

“Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a style is to lose all flexibility. If you have only one style, then you're going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. Lots of styles permit you to walk in and out of books. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.
As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it's not the work of the imagination.”

— Maurice Sendak

“An illustration is an enlargement, and interpretation of the text, so that the reader will comprehend the words better. As an artist, you are always serving the words.
You must never illustrate exactly what is written. You must find a space in the text so that the pictures can do the work. Then you must let the words take over where words do it best. It's a funny kind of juggling act.”

— Maurice Sendak

“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

“It is sometimes hard to be a family.”

— Maurice Sendak

“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

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.

— Maurice Sendak

“I'm totally crazy, I know that.”

— Maurice Sendak

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

— Maurice Sendak

“As a kid, all I thought about was death.”

— Maurice Sendak

“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

“I have a good life.”

— Maurice Sendak

“I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.”

— Maurice Sendak

“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?”

— Maurice Sendak

“Kids are so shrewd.”

— Maurice Sendak

My being gay was something of not great interest to me.

— Maurice Sendak

“A book is a book is a book.”

— Maurice Sendak

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.

— Maurice Sendak

“I would infinitely prefer a daughter.”

— Maurice Sendak

“We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal.”

— Maurice Sendak

“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

I mean, being a child was being a child, was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind. So I didn't want to be a child.

— Maurice Sendak

“I hate those e-books. They can not be the future ... they may well be ... I will be dead.”

— Maurice Sendak

“I'm not a religious person.”

— Maurice Sendak

“There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.”

— Maurice Sendak

We all want to be renewed, don't we?

— Maurice Sendak

“I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. Ripeness is all.”

— Maurice Sendak

“Children are the best living audience in the world because they are so thoroughly honest.”