To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.

I often went to bed without supper cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat.

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

And Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.

I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever.

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.

That's what art is. You don't make up stories. You live your life.