[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...

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,...

. . .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 they can. And...

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

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

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

No!”The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye.

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…

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

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...

Childhood is cannibals and psychotics vomiting in your mouth!

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

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...

Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice

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...

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

A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.