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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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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
Time
Childhood
Think
Tough
Thinking
Missing
Like
Books
Happy
Book
Children
Barbaric
Something
Lots

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I don't know how to write a children's book.
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God, I had great people in my life.
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Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
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My father belonged to a Jewish social club.
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When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.
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All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.
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That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.
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What is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.
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I stress character, character, character.
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I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'
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One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world.
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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.
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I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.
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'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother stupid, inane father.
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I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'
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[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.
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I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.
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To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.
Maurice Sendak
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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.
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If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
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