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

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it
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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As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them. I still do. I continue to do what I did as a child dream of books, make books and collect books.
Maurice Sendak
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Venturing back further, learning is so slow. Accomplishment is so slow. Experiencing and evaluating your experience is so slow.
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
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I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.
Maurice Sendak
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You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
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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I’m not Hans Christian Andersen. Nobody’s gonna make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won’t have it, okay?
Maurice Sendak
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I stress character, character, character.
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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Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown... There's something so hopelessly gross and vile about him it's hard to take him seriously.
Maurice Sendak
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Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.
Maurice Sendak
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I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them
Maurice Sendak
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If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
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 became a set designer for opera.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm totally crazy, I know that.
Maurice Sendak
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From their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
Maurice Sendak
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Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences.
Maurice Sendak