Maurice Sendak, Self Portrait, 1976. Pencil on paper; 11 x 8 ½ in. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation
In honor of Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak, and the artist’s birthday on June 10, we gathered 20 of our favorite Sendak quotes. The exhibition, which is the largest Maurice Sendak retrospective to date, opens October 13, 2024.
1. "My theme is living. I use a metaphor of children’s imagery and the form of a children’s book to express complicated, sophisticated adult feelings." Conversation with Hank Nuwer, 1984. South Carolina Review, 16.2, 1984, pp. 81-97.
2. "Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life’s concern." Digging to the Roots of Maurice Sendak’s Vision - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
3. "I really do these books for myself. It’s something I have to do, and it’s the only thing I want to do. Reaching the kids is important, but secondary. First, always, I have to reach and keep hold of the child in me." Conversation with Nat Hentoff, 1966. New Yorker, 22 January 1966.
4. "Simply, childhood for me was shtetl life in Brooklyn, full of Old World reverberations—and Walt Disney, and the occasional trip to the incredibly windowed 'uptown' that was New York—America!" Lanes, Selma G. The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: Abrams, 1980, p. 26.
5. "If you have one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over. … So, my point is to have a fine style, a fat style, a fairly slim style, and an extremely stout style." Conversation with Virginia Haviland, 1970. Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 28.4, October 1971, pp. 262-80.
6. "My work has always been considered inappropriate. But the ones that I love, the ones that I think work as works of art and books are inappropriate." Maurice Sendak – 'You Have to Take the Dive' | TateShots
7. "There are certain grown-up books that I can’t read no matter how old I get because I feel like I’m ten." Conversation with Hank Nuwer, 1984. South Carolina Review, 16.2, 1984, pp. 81-97.
8. "Often, I am trying to draw the way children feel—or, rather, the way I imagine they feel. It’s the way I know I felt as a child. And all I have to go on is what I know—not only about my childhood then, but about the child I was as he exists now." Weinberg, Jonathan, Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: DelMonico Books, 2022, p. 229.
9. "Children are extraordinarily vulnerable and have few defenses. Childhood suffering is intense. What I try to do is turn a vulnerability into a fantasy where the children can control their environment. … But fantasy must be rooted in reality ten feet deep." Conversation with Muriel Harris, 1970. Elementary English, vol 48, no. 7. November 1971, pp. 825-32.
10. "Wild Things really is the anxiety and pleasure and immense problem of being a child." Conversation with Virginia Haviland, 1970. Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 28.4, October 1971, pp. 262-80.
11. "It’s only after the act of writing the book [Where the Wild Things Are] that, as an adult, I can see what has happened, and talk about fantasy as catharsis, about Max acting out his anger as he fights to grow." Conversation with Nat Hentoff, 1966. New Yorker, 22 January 1966.
12. "Through fantasy, Max, the hero of my book, discharges his anger against his mother, and returns to the real world sleepy, hungry, and at peace with himself." Weinberg, Jonathan, Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: DelMonico Books, 2022, p. 98.
13. "Max is my bravest and therefore my dearest creation. Like all children, he believes in a flexible world of fantasy and reality, a world where a child can skip from one to the other and back again in the sure belief that both really exist." Weinberg, Jonathan, Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: DelMonico Books, 2022, p. 192.
14. "I remember our relatives used to come from the old country, those few who got in before the gate closed, all on my mother’s side. … And they’d pick you up and hug you and kiss you, “Aggghh. Oh, we could eat you up.” And we know they would eat anything, anything. And so, they’re the Wild Things." NOW on PBS Interview with Maurice Sendak
15. "How do you prevent dying? How do you prevent being eaten or mauled by a monster? I still worry about it!" Maurice Sendak on Being a Kid | Blank on Blank
16. "Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day. It's the normal and healthy outlet for corrosive emotions such as impotent frustration and rage; the positive and appropriate channeling of overwhelming and, to the child, inappropriate feelings. It is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis." Lanes, Selma G. The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: Abrams, 1980, p. 66.
17. "I think what I’ve offered is different, but not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody. It was because I was more honest than anybody." Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, 2009, Oscilloscope Pictures. Documentary directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze
18. "This is what the illustrator's job is all about, to interpret the text as a musical conductor interprets a score." Lanes, Selma G. The Art of Maurice Sendak. New York: Abrams, 1980, p. 110.
19. "What Michelangelo was to a Renaissance child, Walt Disney was to a Brooklyn Jewish child." Conversation with Steven Heller, 1986. Innovators of American Illustration, 1986, pp. 70-81.
20. "Art is an exploration of yourself. If it’s good art, then it’s also an exploration for other people." Conversation with Hank Nuwer, 1984. South Carolina Review, 16.2, 1984, pp. 81-97.
