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

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I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'
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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.
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A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy.
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Venturing back further, learning is so slow. Accomplishment is so slow. Experiencing and evaluating your experience is so slow.
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there is no such thing as fantasy unrelated to reality
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We've educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate.
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Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men.
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Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.
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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've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.
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Kids lead a very private life.
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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.
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I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.
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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.
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I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.
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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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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.
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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.
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The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.
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I became a set designer for opera.
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