Maurice Sendak Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Maurice Sendak:

I 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.

As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.

Maurice Sendak

I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago.

Maurice Sendak

What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is.

Maurice Sendak

When I did 'Bumble-ardy,' I was so intensely aware of death. Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did 'Bumble-ardy'. I did 'Bumble-ardy' to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live, as any human being does.

Maurice Sendak

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

Maurice Sendak

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.

Maurice Sendak

I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly... and I want it to be for my brother.

Maurice Sendak

If life is so critical, if Anne Frank could die, if my friend could die, children were as vulnerable as adults, and that gave me a secret purpose to my work, to make them live. Because I wanted to live. I wanted to grow up.

Maurice Sendak

Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.

Maurice Sendak

I'm sick of 'Wild Things.'

Maurice Sendak

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.

Maurice Sendak

I 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

I've always loved pigs: the shape of them, the look of them, and the fact that they are so intelligent.

Maurice Sendak

Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys and women more than men. And there's no doubt about that. We just don't like to think about it. Certainly the men don't like to think about it.

Maurice Sendak

As a kid, all I thought about was death.

Maurice Sendak

Things come to you without you necessarily knowing what they mean.

Maurice Sendak

My parents were ignorant peasants from the Old World.

Maurice Sendak

You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson - she's probably the top - Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.

Maurice Sendak

Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad.

Maurice Sendak

Kids don't know about best sellers. They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them.

Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children.

Maurice Sendak

I didn't have much confidence in myself... never.

Maurice Sendak

I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents!

Maurice Sendak

I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.

Maurice Sendak

It's no fun being lonely.

Maurice Sendak

To get a child's trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. They're so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.

Maurice Sendak

I have a little tiny Emily Dickinson so big that I carry in my pocket everywhere. And you just read three poems of Emily. She is so brave. She is so strong. She is such a sexy, passionate, little woman. I feel better.

Maurice Sendak

I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person.

Maurice Sendak

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.

Maurice Sendak

Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown... There's something so hopelessly gross and vile about him it's hard to take him seriously.

Maurice Sendak

You can't write masterpieces in your 80s and be happy too.

Maurice Sendak

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

Maurice Sendak

I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.

Maurice Sendak

People from New York have been calling, to see if I'm still alive. When I answer the phone, you can hear the disappointment in their voice.

Maurice Sendak

My work is not great, but it's respectable. I have no false illusions.

Maurice Sendak

Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.

Maurice Sendak