My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.

— Maurice Sendak

Sendai is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his deathbed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendai. "It can be done." He lifts his eyebrows to two peaks. "If you're William Blake and totally crazy.

— Maurice Sendak

So that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psychotic mothers, like those of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, who throw their children out. They tell things about life which children know instinctively, and the pleasure and relief lie in finding these things expressed in language that children can live with. You can't eradicate these feelings – they exist, and they're a great source of creative inspiration.

— Maurice Sendak

The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.

— Maurice Sendak

[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as, as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction.

— Maurice Sendak

There must be more to life than having everything!

— Maurice Sendak

There must be more to life than having everything.

— 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

William Blake really is important my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

— Maurice Sendak

You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

— Maurice Sendak