I feel it in me like a woman having a baby, all that life churning inside me. I feel it every day; it moves, stretches, yawns. It's getting ready to be born. It knows exactly what it is.
Maurice SendakWhen you hide another story in a story, thatโs the story I am telling the children.
Maurice SendakArt has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I canโt explain โ I donโt need to. I know that if thereโs a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. Iโm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.
Maurice SendakChildren 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.
Maurice SendakA book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.
Maurice SendakI 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.
Maurice Sendak