God, I had great people in my life.

Sendak is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his death bed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendak. "It can be done." He lifts his eyebrows to two peaks. "If you're William Blake and totally crazy.

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?

I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist.

Dreams raise the emotional level of what I'm doing at the moment.

That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?

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