Maurice Sendak Quotes

Young readers can sense when you're not addressing what's actually going on.

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked.

It is extremely important to me to write for children.

I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them.

Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one.

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

My job is not to frighten children, but sometimes addressing fears and concerns within the safe boundaries of a picture book can fill me with an awesome responsibility to be as truthful and transparent as possible.

For writers, you just have to have the ability to not restrict your imagination. Men can write about women; women can write about men. Straight people can write about gay people; gay people can write about straight people.

I think it's so important that, if I'm writing about the real world, I stay true to it. I think that kids do compartmentalize, and they're hopefully able to see it from a safe place of their own lives and, through that, learn something about empathy.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

I like groaning. That means that you're not pandering to their already settled prejudices.

Anything can become a children's book if you give it to a child...Children are actually the best (and worst) audience for literature because they have no patience with pretence.

Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.

A novel is, hopefully, the starting point of a conversation, one in which the author engages readers and asks that they see things from a different point of view than they might otherwise.

The cure for cynicism is simply to engage honestly.

No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

One of the reasons I began to write was because I wanted stories for my children where the characters spoke as they did and had similar life experiences.

I wish I didn't have ever to sign my long name on the cover of a book, and I wish I could write a story that would seem absolutely true to the child who hears it and to myself.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.