Quotessence
Home / Authors / Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak Quotes

Illustrator

Filter quotes by topic

AllChildrenIfsKidsBookKnowsWild ThingsChildhoodWantThinkingWritingBelieveWayParentPeopleWorldBrotherI CanAdultsFantasyMean

Famous Maurice Sendak Quotes

“There is a standard theory about childhood that everybody works from, and critics check whether a picture book has followed the 'rules' about what is right for children, or what is healthy for children, or what we think is right and healthy for children. This comes into conflict all the time with those things that are mysterious. Children are much more catholic in taste; will tolerate ambiguities, peculiarities, and things illogical; will take them into their unconscious and deal with them as best they can.”

ChildrenChildhoodChildren S Literature
Book:Caldecott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures
Create image

“If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people - I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images - the emotional quality - of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself - my dreaming life - still lives in the light of childhood.”

PeopleIfsStillsMomentsFeelingsDreamLightRememberSoundQualityChildhoodEmotionalParticularEssentialsDrawsUnusualRecallsFooledStill Life
Author:Maurice Sendak
Create image

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.”

IfsThinkingHumansHuman BeingsWhiteOne ThingSkyChildhoodBlueSurvivingUnnaturalTrickyBlue SkyCloudedAnything GoesHappy Childhood
Author:Maurice Sendak
Create image