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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
Says
Somebody
Write
Children
Writing

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know why. I guess it's because that's where my heart is.
Maurice Sendak
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You can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely.
Maurice Sendak
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Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.
Maurice Sendak
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And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it.
Maurice Sendak
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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
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And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.
Maurice Sendak
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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
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I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.
Maurice Sendak
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Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
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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That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.
Maurice Sendak
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I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard.
Maurice Sendak
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The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.
Maurice Sendak
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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
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I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep.
Maurice Sendak
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It was inconceivable to me as a child that I would be an adult. I mean, one assumed that it would happen, but obviously it didn't happen, or if it did, it happened when your back was turned, and then suddenly you were there. So I couldn't have thought about it much.
Maurice Sendak
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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
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Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men.
Maurice Sendak
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As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.
Maurice Sendak
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Thank God that Bumble-Ardy's parents are dead so we don't have to wonder what they did to him. We only know that they were famous, and famous people have unhappy children for the most part. They don't have the time to take care of them. So he's a troubled pig-boy, a kid you've got to watch.
Maurice Sendak