Maurice Sendak

We're animals. We're violent.

— Maurice Sendak

I don't need faith.

— Maurice Sendak

I'm totally crazy, I know that.

— Maurice Sendak

I'm sick of 'Wild Things.'

— Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children.

— Maurice Sendak

I feel extremely vulnerable.

— Maurice Sendak

My therapies went on forever.

— Maurice Sendak

Art has always been my salvation.

— Maurice Sendak

I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets.

— Maurice Sendak

And the walls became the world all around.

— Maurice Sendak

I'm not obsessed with angels but I do adore angels.

— Maurice Sendak

I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'

— Maurice Sendak

My work is not great, but it's respectable.

— Maurice Sendak

You can start making up any kind of story if you want to.

— Maurice Sendak

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.

— Maurice Sendak

There must be more to life than having everything.

— Maurice Sendak

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.

— Maurice Sendak

I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.

— Maurice Sendak

Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern,

— Maurice Sendak

I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?

— Maurice Sendak

William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

— 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…

— Maurice Sendak

I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

— Maurice Sendak

“I will lead you by a shorter way. You will be with your mother soon, but you will find the going hard.”

— Maurice Sendak

Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys and women more than men. And there's no doubt about that. We just don't like…

— Maurice Sendak

I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is…

— Maurice Sendak

That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction,…

— Maurice Sendak

People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the…

— Maurice Sendak

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not…

— Maurice Sendak

I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid, working with my brother and…

— Maurice Sendak

[Drawing] and making things was all we ever did. My brother and I built the entire New York World's Fair of 1939…

— Maurice Sendak

It was inconceivable to me as a child that I would be an adult. I mean, one assumed that it would happen,…

— Maurice Sendak

I had lost my sister recently, too, which meant that my whole family was gone. I was the baby of the family.…

— Maurice Sendak

“An illustration is an enlargement, and interpretation of the text, so that the reader will comprehend the words better. As an artist,…

— Maurice Sendak

“Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a…

— Maurice Sendak

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is…

— Maurice Sendak

Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing, but in a different way.…

— Maurice Sendak

“so that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus…

— Maurice Sendak

If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people - I've never fooled myself about…

— Maurice Sendak

“[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger,…

— Maurice Sendak