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I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.

Maurice Sendak

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Maurice Sendak
Age: 83 †
Born: 1928
Born: June 10
Died: 2012
Died: May 8
Artist
Cartoonist
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Painter
Screenwriter
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Maurice Bernard Sendak
Opera
Designer
Became
Needed
Music
Great
Buff
Time
Love
Classical

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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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.
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I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.
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It is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage. That you lose hope. I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day. I'm pretty good. I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk.
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We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.
Maurice Sendak
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Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
Maurice Sendak
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Venturing back further, learning is so slow. Accomplishment is so slow. Experiencing and evaluating your experience is so slow.
Maurice Sendak
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There's so much more to a book than just the reading.
Maurice Sendak
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Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it.
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I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life is devoted.
Maurice Sendak
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I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'
Maurice Sendak
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My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
Maurice Sendak
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I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.
Maurice Sendak
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I don't know how to write a children's book.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm totally crazy, I know that.
Maurice Sendak
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I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.
Maurice Sendak
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Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern.
Maurice Sendak
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And the walls became the world all around.
Maurice Sendak