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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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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
Sides
Father
Even
Always
Darker
Irony
Witty
Humor
Side
More quotes by Maurice Sendak
Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
Maurice Sendak
I became a set designer for opera.
Maurice Sendak
In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.
Maurice Sendak
When Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain... I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.
Maurice Sendak
[Drawing] and making things was all we ever did. My brother and I built the entire New York World's Fair of 1939 in miniature out of wax. The floor of our room was covered with little waxen buildings. Nobody else could come in.
Maurice Sendak
If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.
Maurice Sendak
I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
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 want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid, working with my brother and making toy airplanes and a whole model of the World's Fair in 1939 out of wax.
Maurice Sendak
I think there is something barbaric in children, and it's missing in lots of books for them because we don't like to think of it. We want them to be happy [but] childhood is a very tough time.
Maurice Sendak
I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises.
Maurice Sendak
Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.
Maurice Sendak
I stress character, character, character.
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
We've educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate.
Maurice Sendak
If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
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
My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.
Maurice Sendak
I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.
Maurice Sendak
Life has only gotten better personally for me as I've gotten older. I mean, being young was such a gross waste of time. I was just such a miserable, miserable person.
Maurice Sendak
