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I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

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
Better
Critics
Book
Seem
Children
Books
Writing
Audience
Think
Write
Thinking
Tell
Kids
Tougher
Seems
Suitable

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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I became a set designer for opera.
Maurice Sendak
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I wanted my wild things to be frightening.
Maurice Sendak
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I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.
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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
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My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.
Maurice Sendak
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There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.
Maurice Sendak
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And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
Maurice Sendak
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'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother stupid, inane father.
Maurice Sendak
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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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Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.
Maurice Sendak
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Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.
Maurice Sendak
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Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.
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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As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.
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'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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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?
Maurice Sendak
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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
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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
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I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.
Maurice Sendak