Maurice Sendak Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Writing

  "Maurice Sendak Dead: 'Where The Wild Things Are' Author Dies At 83" by the Associated Press, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 8, 2012.

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

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Writing

  Boston Globe interview, January 4, 1987.

• Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.

  Maurice Sendak

  Writing, Imagination, Rabbits

  Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.183, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Writing

  Interview with Stephen Colbert, www.colbertnewshub.com. January 25, 2012.

• I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly... and I want it to be for my brother.

  Maurice Sendak

  Brother, Silly, Writing

  "Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait Of Maurice Sendak" by Noel Murray, tv.avclub.com. October 19, 2009.

• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Smart, Writing, Kids

  "Maurice Sendak Sheds Moonlight on a Dark Tale". www.nytimes.com. 1993.

• I don't know how to write a children's book.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Writing

• How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Writing, Decided

• An illustrator in my own mind - and this is not a truth of any kind - 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 that's what you hold on to, and that's what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.

  Maurice Sendak

  Falling In Love, Believe, Book

  "Sendak on Sendak". Interview at Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, 2007/2008.

• 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.

  Maurice Sendak

  Children, Book, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures.

  Maurice Sendak

  Book, Writing, Years

  Maurice Sendak, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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?

  Maurice Sendak

  Mother, Father, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.

  Maurice Sendak

  Writing, Worry, Noses

  "'Fresh Air' Remembers Author Maurice Sendak". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, nhpr.org. June 10, 2015.

• I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

  Maurice Sendak

  Writing, Age, Want

  Source: www.hbook.com

• As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

  Maurice Sendak

  Writing, Artist, Imagination

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