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Maurice Sendak Quotes (1928-2012)
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About Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak (10 June 1928 β 8 May 2012) was an American writer and illustrator of children's literature.
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βWe were the "chosen people," chosen to be killed?β
β"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!" β
βI'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?β
βI often went to bed without supper 'cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.β
βI certainly don't spell it out. But they have to know it's possible things are bad. But, they are surrounded by people who love them and will protect them but cannot hide the fact that there is something bad.β
βHitler made a film about "Hitler gives a camp to the Jews". And they look all shiny. And they're drawing. And they're playing volleyball. And people are dancing. And people are having a wonderful time. And everybody fell for it.β
βI wasn't gonna paint. And I wasn't gonna do ostentatious drawings. I wasn't gonna have gallery pictures. I was gonna hide somewhere where nobody would find me and express myself entirely. I'm like a guerrilla warfare in my best books.β
βWe've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.β
βOne of the few graces of getting old β and God knows there are few graces β is that if youβve 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 the splendid grace. And I think that is whatβs happening to me.β
βChildren 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.β
βI 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.β
βYou can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely. All the idiots that keep coming into the world and wrecking people's lives.
And it is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage, okay? That you lose hope β I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day β I'm pretty good β I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk. But, I'm losing hope.β
And it is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage, okay? That you lose hope β I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day β I'm pretty good β I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk. But, I'm losing hope.β
βI was talking about kids I knew and me. A book, an American book, where the child actually daunts his mother and threatens her.
No way. No way. And then on top of that, she puts him in a room and denies him food. No way. Mamas never do that kinda thing. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. And the worst offense, he comes home. She leaves food for him. And he's not punished. Not punished.β
No way. No way. And then on top of that, she puts him in a room and denies him food. No way. Mamas never do that kinda thing. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. And the worst offense, he comes home. She leaves food for him. And he's not punished. Not punished.β
βAnd when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, "Be still" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.β
βAn illustrator in my own mind β and this is not a truth of any kind β is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And thatβs what you hold on to, and thatβs what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.β
βI wanted my wild things to be frightening. But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child. They came almost every Sunday, and there was my week-long anxiety about their coming the next Sunday... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like "You're so cute I could eat you up." And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would.β
βMaybe there are lots of children or certainly those who are not drawn to my work because they don't want to see those shadows. But, I'm telling what it was like for me. And I know it was not unique for me.
I've known many children, many unhappy and many disturbed children who don't know how to talk about it. And you know, the strangest thing... 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?β
I've known many children, many unhappy and many disturbed children who don't know how to talk about it. And you know, the strangest thing... 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?β
βOnce a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my childrenβs letters β sometimes very hastily β but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, βDear Jim: I loved your card.β Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, βJim loved your card so much he ate it.β That to me was one of the highest compliments Iβve ever received. He didnβt care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.β
βArt 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 β 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.β
What Maurice Sendak Said About Others
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Maurice Sendak on Herman Melville 2 quotes
βI've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great deal more, you know? Imagine him being on Bill Moyers' show. Nothing good happened to Herman Melville.β
Quotes About Maurice Sendak
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Esther Addley on Maurice Sendak
βTo young readers Sendak's "kiddie books" β in particular, 1963's hugely popular Where the Wild Things Are β were anything but idiotic, creating imaginative visions of childhood that adults might have considered dark, cruel or disturbing, but which thrilled and delighted three generations of children.β
Patricia Cohen on Maurice Sendak
βHe is, at heart, a curmudgeon, but a delightful one, with a vast range of knowledge, a wicked sense of humor and a talent for storytelling and mimicry. β¦ He spends his days pondering his heroes: Mozart, Keats, Blake, Melville and Dickinson. He admires and yearns for their βability to be private, the ability to be alone, the ability to follow some spiritual course not written down by anybody.β Mr. Sendak is quick to insist that a vast distance stands between his own accomplishments and theirs. βIβm not one of those people,β he said. βI canβt pretend to be.β Still, he has the feeling that βI will do something yet that is purely for me but will create for someone in the future that passion that Blake and Keats did in me.β What he has failed to consider, though, is that he may already have.β
Tony Kushner on Maurice Sendak
βHeβs one of the most important, if not the most important, writers and artists ever to work in childrenβs literature. In fact, heβs a significant writer and artist in literature. Period.β
Bill Moyers on Maurice Sendak
βNo one does children's stories like Maurice Sendak β¦ over a hundred books in all. He's won nearly every major prize for children's literature plus the national medal of arts. And no wonder. Just look at these titles: In the Night Kitchen; Higglety Pigglety Pop!; Outside Over There; Chicken Soup with Rice; and of course, the most loved and famous of all, Where the Wild Things Are. Our own tattered copy is a Moyers family keepsake. We read it to our children when it was first published forty years ago. We've read it to our grandchildren in the last decade and we fully expect that one day they will be reading it to their grandkids, too. But let me share a Sendak secret with you. A seven-year-old hearing this story couldn't have more fun than a 70-year-old reading it. Where the Wild Things Are is ageless and timeless.β
About Maurice Sendak
Maurice Bernard Sendak (10 June 1928 β 8 May 2012) was an American writer and illustrator of children's literature.