Maurice Sendak Writing Quotations

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

How do you write for children? I really have never figured that out. So I decided to just ignore it

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.

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.

I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures.

I don't know how to write a children's book.

I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.

I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'

I want to write something so simple, so short and so silly... and I want it to be for my brother.

Grown-ups desperately need to feel safe, and then they project onto the kids. But what none of us seem to realize is how smart kids are. They don’t like what we write for them, what we dish up for them, because it’s vapid, so they’ll go for the hard words, they’ll go for the hard concepts, they’ll go for the stuff where they can learn something. Not didactic things, but passionate things.

I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm gonna save children or my life is devoted.

The fan mail I get from kids are asking me questions which they do not ask their mothers and fathers. Because if they had, why write to me, a perfect stranger?