Maurice Sendak Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“And the walls became the world all around.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : Maurice Sendak (1964). “Where the wild things are”, HarperCollins Publishers
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“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.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : Maurice Sendak's acceptance speech upon being awarded the Caldecott Medal for "Where the Wild Things Are" (1964), as quoted in "Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books: 1956-65" edited by Lee Kingman, 1965.
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“I really don't like the city anymore. You get pushed and harassed and people grope you. It's too tumultuous. It's too crazy.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
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“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : "Outside Over There". Interview With Emma Brockes, harpers.org. March 2013.
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“One of the beauties of being an artist is that you can create a whole new world, with circumstances that are better in your invented world than they are in the real world.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.†Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.†That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : "Maurice Sendak and childhood — we ate it up, we loved it". www.washingtonpost.com. May 8, 2012.
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“All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
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“I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : "Celebrating 30 Years Of 'Fresh Air' As A Daily NPR Program". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, ypradio.org. May 12, 2017.
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“There must be more to life than having everything.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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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 -
“And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!”
-- Maurice SendakSource : Maurice Sendak (1964). “Where the wild things are”, HarperCollins Publishers
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“There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“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 -
“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 SendakSource : "Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author: A Conversation between Maurice Sendak and Virginia Haviland". Book by Virginia Haviland, 1970.
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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 write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
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“Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : "Now" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. March 12, 2004.
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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 -
“I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“I never can satisfy some need in me to achieve something of incredible hight. For my sake. It puzzles me deeply. And it sours my life. So there is a permanent dissatisfaction.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
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“Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern,”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“One of the few graces of getting old-and God knows there are few graces-is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
“There's so much more to a book than just the reading.”
-- Maurice Sendak -
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“Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.”
-- Maurice SendakSource : "Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak" by Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak" by Noel Murray, tv.avclub.com. October 19, 2009.
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“I hate [ebooks]. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book.”
-- Maurice Sendak
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