Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Believe
Mozart
Life
Emily
Shakespeare
Straits
Narrow
Dickinson
Gotten
Melville
Gods
Herman
Probably
Keats
Wonderful
Fervently

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

Image
My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
Maurice Sendak
Image
When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.
Maurice Sendak
Image
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
Image
There's a mystery there, a clue, a nut, a bolt, and if I put it together, I find me.
Maurice Sendak
Image
Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
Maurice Sendak
Image
I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.
Maurice Sendak
Image
If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
Maurice Sendak
Image
It was a very difficult time. I was working on [umble-Ardy] when my partner and friend was dying of cancer. We set up a room in the house to be like a hospital room. Eugene died, and then I had bypass surgery. I was doing the book to stay sane while all this was going on.
Maurice Sendak
Image
I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep.
Maurice Sendak
Image
Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.
Maurice Sendak
Image
I have a little tiny Emily Dickinson so big that I carry in my pocket everywhere. And you just read three poems of Emily. She is so brave. She is so strong. She is such a sexy, passionate, little woman. I feel better.
Maurice Sendak
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.
Maurice Sendak
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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 what's happening to me.
Maurice Sendak
Image
I don't know how to write a children's book.
Maurice Sendak
Image
Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown... There's something so hopelessly gross and vile about him it's hard to take him seriously.
Maurice Sendak
Image
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