Maurice Sendak

I am in love with the world.

Truthfullness to life — both fantasy life and factual life — is the basis of all great art.

Kids don’t know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren’t star chasers and they don’t suck up. It’s why I like them.

"A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy."

[Interview with Emma Brockes, <i>The Believer</i>, November/December, 2012]

Never fear. When this rose blooms, you will be with me again.

"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"

Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a style is to lose all flexibility. If you have only one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. Lots of styles permit you to walk in and out of books. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.

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.

If there's anything I'm proud of in my work — it's not that I draw better; there's so many better graphic artists than me — or that I write better, no. It's — and I'm not saying I know the truth, because what the hell is that? But what I got from Ruth and Dave, a kind of fierce honesty, to not let the kid down, to not let the kid get punished, to not suffer the child to be dealt with in a boring, simpering, crushing-of-the-spirit kind of way.

Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him — and it was still hot.

There's so much more to a book than just the reading.

There is a standard theory about childhood that everybody works from, and critics check whether a picture book has followed the 'rules' about what is right for children, or what is healthy for children, or what we think is right and healthy for children. This comes into conflict all the time with those things that are mysterious. Children are much more catholic in taste; will tolerate ambiguities, peculiarities, and things illogical; will take them into their unconscious and deal with them as best they can.

I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.

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.

There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen

Emeralds,' said the rabbit. 'Emeralds make a lovely gift.