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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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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
Happen
Much
Happened
Inconceivable
Would
Child
Assumed
Didn
Adult
Thought
Obviously
Suddenly
Back
Turned
Children
Couldn
Mean

More quotes by Maurice Sendak

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Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
Maurice Sendak
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Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.
Maurice Sendak
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God, I had great people in my life.
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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You can start making up any kind of story if you want to.
Maurice Sendak
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Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.
Maurice Sendak
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There's so much more to a book than just the reading.
Maurice Sendak
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I'm totally crazy, I know that.
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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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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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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That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?
Maurice Sendak
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We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.
Maurice Sendak
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I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.
Maurice Sendak
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When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.
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.
Maurice Sendak
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My father belonged to a Jewish social club.
Maurice Sendak
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Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.
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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I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.
Maurice Sendak