"[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction."

"Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice"

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

"But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go - we’ll eat you up - we love you so!”And Max said, “No!”The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye."

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

"I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

"Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!"

"Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things."

"To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult."

"Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk."