Top 120 Maurice Sendak Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Maurice Sendak

2. “I wish you all good things. Live your life, live your life, live your life.”

— Maurice Sendak

3. “Knowledge is the driving force that puts creative passion to work.”

— Maurice Sendak

4. “Truthfullness to life-both fantasy life and factual life-is the basis of all great art.”

— Maurice Sendak

5. “I don’t want to lose hope.”

— Maurice Sendak

6. “Oh, please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!”

— Maurice Sendak

7. “There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen.”

— Maurice Sendak

8. “The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood – the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don’t see.”

— Maurice Sendak

9. “There’s so much more to a book than just the reading.”

— Maurice Sendak

Featured in: Reading Quotes

10. “I’ll eat you up I love you so.”

— Maurice Sendak

11. “And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.”

— Maurice Sendak

12. “Art has always been my salvation.”

— Maurice Sendak

13. “I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more.”

— Maurice Sendak

14. “There must be more to life than having everything.”

— Maurice Sendak

15. “And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming wild things.”

— Maurice Sendak

16. “It’s no fun being lonely.”

— Maurice Sendak

Featured in: Fun Quotes

17. “I’m totally crazy, I know that.”

— Maurice Sendak

18. “There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

— Maurice Sendak

19. “Where the Wild Things Are was not meant to please everybody – only children. A letter from a seven-year-old boy encourages me to think that I have reached children as I had hoped. He wrote: ‘How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive my sister and I want to spend the summer there. Please answer soon.’ I did not answer that question, for I have no doubt that sooner or later they will find their way, free of charge.”

— Maurice Sendak

20. “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.”

— Maurice Sendak

21. “Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”

— Maurice Sendak

22. “It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. I have nothing now but praise for my life.”

— Maurice Sendak

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

— Maurice Sendak

24. “I don’t write for children. I write, and somebody says, ‘That’s for children.’”

— Maurice Sendak

25. “I want to see me to the end working, living for myself. Ripeness is all.”

— Maurice Sendak

26. “Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice.”

— Maurice Sendak

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

— Maurice Sendak

28. “That’s what art is. You don’t make up stories. You live your life.”

— Maurice Sendak

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

29. “It’s only adults who read the top layers most of the time. I think children read the internal meanings of everything.”

— Maurice Sendak

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

— Maurice Sendak

31. “As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.”

— Maurice Sendak

32. “What is the point of it all? Not leaving legacies. But being ripe. Being ripe.”

— Maurice Sendak

33. “Each month is gay, Each season nice, When eating Chicken soup With rice.”

— Maurice Sendak

34. “I stress character, character, character.”

— Maurice Sendak

35. “As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can’t tell your parents that.”

— Maurice Sendak

36. “Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.”

— Maurice Sendak

37. “We’ve educated children to think spontaneity is inappropriate.”

— Maurice Sendak

38. “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

39. “I don’t believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again.”

— Maurice Sendak

40. “He’s just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be king.”

— Maurice Sendak

41. “Then from far away across the world he smelled good things to eat, so he gave up being king of the wild things.”

— Maurice Sendak

42. “I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable.”

— Maurice Sendak

43. “And the walls became the world all around.”

— Maurice Sendak

44. “Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don’t know why. I guess it’s because that’s where my heart is.”

— Maurice Sendak

45. “I want to be free again. I want to be free like when I was a kid, working with my brother and making toy airplanes and a whole model of the World’s Fair in 1939 out of wax.”

— Maurice Sendak

46. “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

47. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

48. “We’re animals. We’re violent. We’re criminal. We’re not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.”

— Maurice Sendak

49. “Let the wild rumpus start!”

— Maurice Sendak

50. “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.”

— Maurice Sendak