If you're making it up, make it up good. And then believe in what you made up.

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children.

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?

And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

I'm getting old. And I'm disappointed in everything just the way old people traditionally, boringly are. That bothers me because is it too traditional? Am I not fighting hard enough? I don't feel the fight. I don't feel it.

Art has always been my salvation.