I had lost my sister recently, too, which meant that my whole family was gone. I was the baby of the family. There were five Sendaks and there were five Wild Things, and now there's only one Sendak, and he's about to bite the dust, too! Life, as I said before, was very difficult at that time and so it was natural that there would be a change in the look of things. Also, I was very impressed with my own strength in doing this under the circumstances in which I was living.

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.

Kids books Grownup books That's just marketing. Books are books.

I never can satisfy some need in me to achieve something of incredible hight. For my sake. It puzzles me deeply. And it sours my life. So there is a permanent dissatisfaction.

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.

If I have an unusual gift, it's not that I draw particularly better than other people - I've never fooled myself about that. Rather it's that I remember things other people don't recall: the sounds and feelings and images - the emotional quality - of particular moments in childhood. Happily an essential part of myself - my dreaming life - still lives in the light of childhood.

God, I had great people in my life.