Maurice Sendak: Quotes about thinking

“Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy.”

Maurice Sendak

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.

Children , Thinking , Childhood

“We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate.”

Maurice Sendak

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.

Children , Education , Thinking

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

Maurice Sendak

Source: The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to Present

Children , Thinking , Time , Reading

“I’m gay. I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business … All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”

Maurice Sendak

As quoted in "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are" by Patricia Cohen in The New York Times (9 September 2008)

Business , Thinking , Parent , Happiness

“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

Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)

Love , Truth , Books , Thinking

“One of the few graces of getting old — and God knows there are few graces — is that if you’ve worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is the splendid grace. And I think that is what’s happening to me.”

Maurice Sendak

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

God , Thinking