318 Quotes by Maurice Sendak

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

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 right – that children despair of you if you don’t tell them the truth.

I am in love with the world.

I 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.

I became a set designer for opera. I’m a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.

I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid, working with my brother and making toy airplanes and a whole model of the World’s Fair in 1939 out of wax.

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

We’re animals. We’re violent. We’re criminal. We’re not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with – loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?