Maurice Sendak Quote

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

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.

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About Maurice Sendak

Maurice Bernard Sendak (; June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was impacted by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust. Sendak illustrated many works by other authors, such as the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik. He achieved acclaim with Where the Wild Things Are (1963), the first of a trilogy followed by In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981). He designed sets for operas, notably Mozart's The Magic Flute.
In 1987, Sendak was the subject of an American Masters documentary, "Mon Cher Papa". In 1996, he received the National Medal of Arts. Per Margalit Fox, Sendak, "the most important children's book artist of the 20th century", "wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche."