Maurice Sendak Quotes About Childhood

Quotes about: Childhood

• Children 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Real, Thinking

  "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, www.nytimes.com. November 8, 1987.

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Childhood, Theme

• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Thinking, Blue, Sky

  "Why Maurice Sendak Puts Kid Characters in Danger". Interview With Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. September 26, 2006.

• The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.

  Maurice Sendak

  People, Childhood, Magic

• 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 demarcation. 'Oh you mustn't tell them that. You mustn't tell them that.' You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true. If it's true you tell them.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Believe, Childhood

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Crazy, Anger

  "'Wild Things' author isn't wild about Hollywood" by Jake Coyle, www.today.com. October 13, 2009.

• Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!

  Maurice Sendak

  Childhood, Vomiting, Mouths

  "In the Dumps", www.newyorker.com. September 27, 1993.

• I remember my own childhood vividly...I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them

  Maurice Sendak

  Childhood, Scare, Adults

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Brother, Childhood, Made

  "This Pig Wants To Party: Maurice Sendak's Latest". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. September 20, 2011.

• I think there is something barbaric in children, and it's missing in lots of books for them because we don't like to think of it. We want them to be happy [but] childhood is a very tough time.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Thinking

  Source: blankonblank.org

• Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.

  Maurice Sendak

  Childhood, Tricky

• I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Childhood

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Heart, Childhood, Stuck

• William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

  Maurice Sendak

  Childhood, Important, Serious Business

• I think that if in your heart, you are seeking out a real puzzle, and you're not looking to frighten anybody, you're not looking to upset anybody, and you're looking to discuss a subject that you yourself went through when you were nine - you just don't remember the difficulties of one's own childhood.

  Maurice Sendak

  Real, Heart, Thinking

  Source: www.dazeddigital.com

• All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.

  Maurice Sendak

  Brother, Character, Kids

  Source: www.hbook.com

• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Dream, Emotional, Light

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