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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

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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
Kind
Creatures
Child
Money
Didn
Routes
Power
Pocket
Without
Pockets
Children
Creature
Mean
Escape

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.
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And the walls became the world all around.
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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.
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I'm totally crazy, I know that.
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Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.
Maurice Sendak
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I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
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 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
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There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.
Maurice Sendak
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Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men.
Maurice Sendak
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My father belonged to a Jewish social club.
Maurice Sendak
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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.
Maurice Sendak
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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
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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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Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.
Maurice Sendak
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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.
Maurice Sendak
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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.
Maurice Sendak
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Oh, please don't go — we'll eat you up — we love you so!
Maurice Sendak
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I'm not jaded. I never have been jaded. I've always been surprised at my success. I've always enjoyed it.
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