“Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy.”
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.
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Maurice Sendak 53
American illustrator and writer of children's books 1928–2012Related quotes

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Let's Go Crazy
Song lyrics, Purple Rain (1984)

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Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 22

“I think our motto should be, post-9-11, "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences."”
Comments at a CPAC Conference (10 February 2006), as quoted in * Max Blumenthal
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The Huffington Post
2006-02-10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/ann-coulter-at-cpac-on-r_b_15434.html
2006

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 5, The Spoiled Brat, p. 92