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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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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
Somebody
Write
Children
Writing
Says
More quotes by Maurice Sendak
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
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
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
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
Oh, please don't go — we'll eat you up — we love you so!
Maurice Sendak
I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.
Maurice Sendak
I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!
Maurice Sendak
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
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
I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.
Maurice Sendak
I wanted my wild things to be frightening.
Maurice Sendak
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
As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.
Maurice Sendak
there is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality
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 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 wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.
Maurice Sendak
That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.
Maurice Sendak
My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.
Maurice Sendak
I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.
Maurice Sendak
