Maurice Sendak Quotes

"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.

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

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

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

I will lead you by a shorter way. You will be with your mother soon, but you will find the going hard.

Childhood is a tricky business. Usually something goes wrong.

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.

Maybe there are lots of children or certainly those who are not drawn to my work because they don't want to see those shadows. But, I'm telling what it was like for me. And I know it was not unique for me. I've known many children, many unhappy and many disturbed children who don't know how to talk about it. And you know, the strangest thing... the fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?

Oh please don't go- we'll eat you up- we love you so!

Let the wild rumpus start!

I often went to bed without supper 'cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.

Never fear. When this rose blooms, you will be with me again.

Books don't go out of fashion with children. They just go out of fashion with adults and publishers.

And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.

"A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy."

[Interview with Emma Brockes, The Believer, November/December, 2012]