Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendakwas an American illustrator and writer of children's books. He became widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Born to Jewish-Polish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Besides Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak also wrote works such as In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and illustrated many works by other authors including the Little Bear books by Else...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth10 June 1928
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I don't want to lose hope.
I think that if in your heart, you are seeking out a real puzzle, and you're not looking to frighten anybody, you're not looking to upset anybody, and you're looking to discuss a subject that you yourself went through when you were nine - you just don't remember the difficulties of one's own childhood.
And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it.
Make it dangerous or it's not worth doing.
Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.
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?
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.
If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.
I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die.
William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.
Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing, but in a different way. It's no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind, if it has nothing to do with the text. . . the artist must override the story, but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story.
In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.
Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.
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.