Maurice Sendak Quotes

All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment - divested of affectation and free from all pretense.

I am often accused of being childish. I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons are the fruits of two seasons.

When you practice Dynamic Meditation for the first time this will be difficult, because we have suppressed the body so much that a suppressed pattern of life has become natural to us. It is not natural! Look at a child: he plays with his body in quite a different way. If he is crying, he is crying intensely. The cry of a child is a beautiful thing to hear, but the cry of an adult is ugly. Even in anger a child is beautiful; he has a total intensity. But when an adult is angry he is ugly; he is not total. And any type of intensity is beautiful.

We’ve educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.

If children are allowed free development and given occupation to correspond with their unfolding minds their natural goodness will shine forth.

Notice, for example, that people who talk about "the joys of childhood" are always adults. Only an adult, utterly remote from the reality of childhood, could suppose it is time of joys.

I felt the naivete of a child in my dancing. I cherished that feeling. I had what I call a knowledgeable naivete, and it worked for me.

The true creator-self is a light at heart and free child, who accesses destiny as a simple act of joyful play.

When the spirit of child's play enters into the creative process, it's a wonderful force and something to be nurtured.

Most men die many times in their lives. The man we become invariably slaughters the child we once were. His knowledge of the world murders the babe's innocence. from Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon

Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well, I won't do that.

The human child – so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.

I have a lot of stories about being a kid because it was the last time I was interesting.

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self.

I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

You can remember times when you were a kid, when life looked too doggoned deliciously beautiful to be left alone. So you could feel like that again if you worked at it.

The child is father of the man: And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

...and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.

Many things, such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly - are done worst when we try hardest to do them.

Let her tell stories and dance in the rain, somersault, tumble and run, her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep, let her grow like a weed in the sun.

We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death

I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.