Then one day my sister abandoned me at the 1939 World's Fair, and that incident is the essence of In the Night Kitchen. I was standing there with hundreds of other people waving back at the little midgets dressed like bakers when I turned around and my sister was gone! The next thing I know I'm screaming and crying and policemen are taking me to a big place with tons of kids who had all been abandoned like me. At least I was old enough to give them a name and an address.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.

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

I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.

There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.

I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.