Works
Where the Wild Things Are
Maurice SendakFamous Maurice Sendak Quotes
As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DC103CF93BA35752C1A961948260&scp=2&sq=Sendak+protecting&st=nyt
Context: 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.
Source: Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures
“Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so.”
Variant: Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!
Source: Parting words of the Wild Things to Max in Where the Wild Things Are (1963)
Maurice Sendak Quotes about children
As quoted in Boston Globe interview (4 January 1987)
Acceptance speech upon being awarded the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are (1964), published in Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books, 1956-65, edited by Lee Kingman (1965)
Context: Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious — and what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.
“When you hide another story in a story, that’s the story I am telling the children.”
Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)
As quoted in Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author : A Conversation between Maurice Sendak and Virginia Haviland (1972) by Virginia Haviland
Context: I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.
Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present
NOW interview (2004)
Maurice Sendak Quotes about people
“Scares the bejesus out of people and makes them hate him. Because he's so [[good.]”
NOW interview (2004)
Context: Herman Melville is a god. … I cherish what he did. He was a genius. Wrote Moby-Dick. Wrote Pierre. Wrote The Confidence-Man, wrote Billy Budd. … Oh, yes. Look at him. … Scares the bejesus out of people and makes them hate him. Because he's so good. ] Claggart has him killed in that book. Claggart has his [[eye on that boy. He will not tolerate such goodness, such blondeness, such blue eye. Goodness is scary. It's like you want to knock it. You want to hit it. Are we a country of beating down things? We love seeing people go down.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: You can't get rid of evil. We can't, and I feel that so intensely. All the idiots that keep coming into the world and wrecking people's lives.
And it is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage, okay? That you lose hope — I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day — I'm pretty good — I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk. But, I'm losing hope.
Maurice Sendak: Trending quotes
Variant: "And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"
Source: Where the Wild Things Are (1963)
Sendak here quotes from King Lear by William Shakespeare : Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative. And also, I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid … Where we just had fun. What I mean by this is I've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great deal more, you know? Imagine him being on Bill Moyers' show. Nothing good happened to Herman Melville. I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. "Ripeness is all." Now, interpreting what ripeness is our own individual problem. … So, what is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.
“We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate.”
As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987)
Context: We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.
Maurice Sendak Quotes
NOW interview (2004)
Context: The ripeness was a letter that John Keats wrote to his brother who emigrated to America describing what it was like to have a peach or piece of a peach in his mouth. And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it. Let it go through your palette. Let it lie on your tongue. Let it melt a little bit. Let it run from the corners. It's like describing the most incredible sex orgy. And then, you bite. But, it must be so ripe. It must be so delicious. In other words, you must not waste a second of this deliciousness which for him was life and being a great poet. That you savor every, everything that happened. I want to get ripe.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: I wasn't gonna paint. And I wasn't gonna do ostentatious drawings. I wasn't gonna have gallery pictures. I was gonna hide somewhere where nobody would find me and express myself entirely. I'm like a guerrilla warfare in my best books.
“He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
Interview with Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's "Fresh Air"
Context: Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
“I'm telling what it was like for me. And I know it was not unique for me.”
NOW interview (2004)
Context: Maybe there are lots of children or certainly those who are not drawn to my work because they don't want to see those shadows. But, I'm telling what it was like for me. And I know it was not unique for me.
I've known many children, many unhappy and many disturbed children who don't know how to talk about it. And you know, the strangest thing... 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?
“Art has always been my salvation.”
NOW interview (2004)
Context: Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain — I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I'm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures. … And then, we're supposed to be civilized. We're supposed to go to work every day. We're supposed to be nice to our friends and send Christmas cards to our parents.
We're supposed to do all these things which trouble us deeply because it's so against what we naturally would want to do. And if I've done anything, I've had kids express themselves as they are, impolitely, lovingly — they don't mean any harm. They just don't know what the right way is.
And as it turns out sometimes the so-called "right way" is utterly the wrong way. What a monstrous confusion.
“I wanted my wild things to be frightening.”
As quoted in The Art of Maurice Sendak by Selma G. Lanes (1980)
Context: I wanted my wild things to be frightening. But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child. They came almost every Sunday, and there was my week-long anxiety about their coming the next Sunday... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like "You're so cute I could eat you up." And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would.
Sendak here quotes from King Lear by William Shakespeare : Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: My big concern is me and what do I do now until the time of my death. That is valid. That is useful. That is beautiful. That is creative. And also, I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid … Where we just had fun. What I mean by this is I've had my career. I've had my success. God willing, it should have happened to Herman Melville who deserved it a great deal more, you know? Imagine him being on Bill Moyers' show. Nothing good happened to Herman Melville. I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. "Ripeness is all." Now, interpreting what ripeness is our own individual problem. … So, what is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: The ripeness was a letter that John Keats wrote to his brother who emigrated to America describing what it was like to have a peach or piece of a peach in his mouth. And it's one of the sexiest things you will ever read of how slow you should take the peach. Don't rush it. Let it go through your palette. Let it lie on your tongue. Let it melt a little bit. Let it run from the corners. It's like describing the most incredible sex orgy. And then, you bite. But, it must be so ripe. It must be so delicious. In other words, you must not waste a second of this deliciousness which for him was life and being a great poet. That you savor every, everything that happened. I want to get ripe.
As quoted in "The Paternal Pride of Maurice Sendak" by Bernard Holland, in The New York Times (8 November 1987) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE6DC103CF93BA35752C1A961948260&scp=2&sq=Sendak+protecting&st=nyt
Context: 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.
“I was talking about kids I knew and me.”
On Where the Wild Things Are
NOW interview (2004)
Context: I was talking about kids I knew and me. A book, an American book, where the child actually daunts his mother and threatens her.
No way. No way. And then on top of that, she puts him in a room and denies him food. No way. Mamas never do that kinda thing. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. And the worst offense, he comes home. She leaves food for him. And he's not punished. Not punished.
NOW interview (2004)
Context: Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain — I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I'm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.
“Herman Melville is a god. … I cherish what he did. He was a genius.”
NOW interview (2004)
Context: Herman Melville is a god. … I cherish what he did. He was a genius. Wrote Moby-Dick. Wrote Pierre. Wrote The Confidence-Man, wrote Billy Budd. … Oh, yes. Look at him. … Scares the bejesus out of people and makes them hate him. Because he's so good. ] Claggart has him killed in that book. Claggart has his [[eye on that boy. He will not tolerate such goodness, such blondeness, such blue eye. Goodness is scary. It's like you want to knock it. You want to hit it. Are we a country of beating down things? We love seeing people go down.
Source: Where the Wild Things Are
“There must be more to life than having everything!”
Higglety Pigglety Pop! or, There Must Be More to Life (1967)
Source: Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life
“There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen”
Source: Where the Wild Things Are
Source: Where the Wild Things Are (1963); of this passage Bill Moyers stated in "NOW with Bill Moyers", PBS (12 March 2004) http://www.pbs.org/now/arts/sendak.html:
Context: And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, "Be still" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once.
Context: And when he came to the place where the wild things are, they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws till Max said, "Be still" and tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once. And they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things.
“And the walls became the world all around.”
Source: Where the Wild Things Are
Source: Where the Wild Things Are
“Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice.”
Source: Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months
Variant: I'll eat you up I love you so.
Source: Where the Wild Things Are
“I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction.”
As quoted in "Sendak Is Forming Company for National Children's Theater" by Eleanor Blau, in The New York Times (25 October 1990) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D61F3DF936A15753C1A966958260&scp=1&sq=Sendak+reduction&st=nyt
As quoted in "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen in The New York Times (9 September 2008)
“We were the "chosen people," chosen to be killed?”
On traditional Jewish faith, as quoted in "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen in The New York Times (9 September 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/arts/design/10sendak.html?pagewanted=all
Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)
As quoted in "Interview: Why Is Maurice Sendak So Incredibly Angry?" by Leonard S. Marcus in Parenting (October 1993); also in Ways of Telling : Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book (2002) by Leonard S. Marcus, p. 181
