'Hansel and Gretel' is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father.

And the walls became the world all around.

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.

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

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

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

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.