Illustrations have as much to say as the text. The trick is to say the same thing but in a different way. It's no good being an illustrator who is saying a lot that is on his or her mind if it has nothing to do with the text. . . The artist must override the story but he must also override his own ego for the sake of the story.

— Maurice Sendak

In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

— Maurice Sendak

I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.

— Maurice Sendak

I remember my own childhood vividly... I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them

— Maurice Sendak

I remember my own childhood vividly. I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them. (In conversation with Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker, September 27, 1993)

— Maurice Sendak

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.

— Maurice Sendak

It is sometimes hard to be a family.

— Maurice Sendak

It's only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.

— 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

Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.

— Maurice Sendak