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Children Quotes by Maurice Sendak

75 Children quotes by Maurice Sendak

All Children quotes Maurice Sendak’s page

Maurice Sendak shares a deep empathy for children in dire trouble, recalling his own sickly childhood and immigrant parents who feared for his life. He notes that children crave honesty and that they judge books with blunt truth, making them tough but sincere critics.

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I refuse to lie to children.

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I would infinitely prefer a daughter.

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Kids lead a very private life.

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Kids are so shrewd.

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We've educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate.

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I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.

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Grown-ups are afraid for children. It's not children who are afraid.

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

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I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction.

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Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

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I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did.

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Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of.

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And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.

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There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.

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It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.

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In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

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I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I…

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Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.

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I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life…

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How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

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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…

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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;…

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I said anything I wanted because I don't believe in children I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe that there's a…

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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…

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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,…

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Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents.…

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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,…

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Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm…

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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;…

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“The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it…

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For my father the one calamity was that my brother and sister and I never learned to swim. My father, who was…

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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…

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. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of…

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I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood…

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

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

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Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!

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I don't know how to write a children's book.

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I don't write for children. I write and someone says it's for children.

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Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know why. I guess it's because that's where my heart is.

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More by Maurice Sendak

I never thought of Bumble-Ardy in that way. But I still have that same deep feeling for children who are in dire trouble. I…

I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna…

The distinctions of fine art bore me to death.

The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had,…

“May I ask what you have in your black leather bag with gold buckles?" "Everything." They were climbing a narrow staircase. Rhoda stopped to…

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

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…

I'm a lucky buck.

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

It's no fun being lonely.

It dawned on me that art was the way I could survive.

I cry a lot because I miss people.

You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw.

I'm still as enamored and turned on by work as I was when I was young.