Maurice Sendak Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

There must be more to life than having everything!

Maurice Sendak
"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"

Maurice Sendak
You cannot write for children... They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

Maurice Sendak
We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures. … And then, we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents.
We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are, impolitely, lovingly — they don't mean any harm. They just don't know what the right way is.
And as it turns out sometimes the so-called "right way" is utterly the wrong way. What a monstrous confusion.

Maurice Sendak
Children who fight back, children who are full of excitement are the kind of children I like.

Maurice Sendak
Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.

Maurice Sendak
When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I am telling the children.

Maurice Sendak
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
The attitude towards children was: Keep them calm, keep them happy, keep them snug and safe. It's not a putdown of those earlier books. But basically, they went by the rules that children should be safe and that we adults should be their guardians. I got out of that, and I was considered outlandish. So be it.

Maurice Sendak
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 the splendid grace. And I think that is what's happening to me.

Maurice Sendak
Look, life is pretty dreadful most of the time. Even in the country that's so pretty with the flowers and leaves and sunshine. And I was abandoned when [his partner Eugene] died! I'm alone. I feel like an old bubba. And I'm not kind all of the time, I'm not nice all the time.

Maurice Sendak
I'm not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody's gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won't have it, okay?

Maurice Sendak
Hitler made a film about "Hitler gives a camp to the Jews". And they look all shiny. And they're drawing. And they're playing volleyball. And people are dancing. And people are having a wonderful time. And everybody fell for it.

Maurice Sendak
Max was a little beast, and we're all little beasts. That was what was so novel.

Maurice Sendak
I'm gay. I just didn't think it was anybody's business … All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.

Maurice Sendak
I was developing a child who I recognized as myself as a child, from my observations of other children around me in Brooklyn. We were wild creatures. We did things that were objectionable.

Maurice Sendak
We all did the most outlandish things, some of which we told our parents, most of which we did not. We were all keenly aware that parents were scaredy cats.

Maurice Sendak
I stress character, character, character. And for authors to go where you want; go where you will. Children will go everywhere.

Maurice Sendak
And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, "Be still" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.

Maurice Sendak
I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. 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
I can't read the papers anymore. I just feel sorry for Obama. I want him so much to win. I would do anything to help him win. He's a decent, wonderful man. And these Republican schnooks are so horrible. They'd be comical if they weren't not funny.

Maurice Sendak
I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction.

Maurice Sendak
We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.

Maurice Sendak
The blackbirds are in this book, they're both pro the kids and against the kids. Just like fate. Sometimes it goes your way. Sometimes... and also a blackbird is from my passion for Schubert songs and his blackbirds and his birds of doom or birds of good. … some people were baffled that in the last big picture of that book, there's a crucifix on the wall of the children's house. Everybody assumes the hero and heroine are Jewish and the mother is Jewish. They're not. They're not. — That was my point. Those kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all children were in the Holocaust. Everybody was in the Holocaust. So, I made sure my hero and heroine were not Jewish children. That was too easy. That was too easy.

Maurice Sendak
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