Sendak is in search of what he calls a "yummy death". William Blake set the standard, jumping up from his death bed at the last minute to start singing. "A happy death," says Sendak. "It can be done."...
It is sometimes hard to be a family.
. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best...
Childhood is a tricky business. Usually, something goes wrong.
I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!
I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness.
He’s just a boy, pretending to be a wolf, pretending to be king
[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 th...
My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.
Mothers and children are human beings, and they will sometimes do the wrong thing.
In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.
But the wild things cried, Oh please don't go- We'll eat you up- we love you so!
I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be.
The distinctions of fine art bore me to death.
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)
I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever.
I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more...What I dread is the isolation. ... T...
As a kid, all I thought about was death.
I'm not afraid of death.