Maurice Sendak Quotes

The drink? Yes, I've had tough times in my life, especially the last year, regarding my ex-wife, my kids, I nearly broke my neck, I was on death row with pneumonia.

Within my first year of moving abroad living on my own, my sister got ill - she got cancer - and at the same time, my mum got cancer, and she passed away. I think at that time it was a hard challenge for me to deal with it, but in a way, I have always taken strength out of anything that has come at me.

When I was 17 years old, I put out an album while my mother was dying of cancer. That right there alone is a struggle. That's hard. That's tough for anybody.

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

It's important to wallow and grieve when you have a health issue. I don't think you really get the best stuff out of life until you've had the worst stuff.

The loss of my dad gave me a lot of inspiration because sometimes I stop and think, 'Would everybody have done the same thing that I did?' It was a very tough thing to cope with. I only went home for less than 24 hours.

I'd had to cope with a lot of death and illness in my family from a young age, and that maybe gave me a bleak outlook on the world.

We are far betting dealing with the big losses-death, divorce, debt, and debilitating illness-than with the daily onslaught of little losses.

Cancer is awful. It took 10 years until I didn't think about it every day. Nobody should go through this. Nobody.

After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.

My mom died of cancer when I was really young. I'm not someone who tries to work out their own stuff with a role, but I think that happened despite my best efforts to keep myself separate from it.

When I was 19 years old, both of my parents died in the same year; my mom of cancer and my dad in a car accident. Through the next two or three years and a series of bad decisions - all my own, I might add - I ended up literally homeless, before that was even a word. I even slept occasionally under a pier on the Gulf Coast.

My father died of brain cancer in 1991. I do not know anyone whose life has not been touched by the loss of a loved one to cancer. I wrote my book 'Gracefully Gone' about my father's fight and my struggle growing up with an ill parent. I wrote it to help others know they are not alone in this all-too-often insurmountable war against cancer.

I've been through cancer, divorce, loss and bereavement, but they are things most humans go through.

My wife Cecily Adams was dying of cancer, my daughter Madeline was struggling to overcome an autism diagnosis, and my father was dying, all at the same time. Writing the journal was a cathartic experience, and an extremely positive one.

I'm not someone who has had to deal with much personal drama outside of the usual: growing up with parents who hated each other, two marriages and divorces of my own. There was the cancer thing, too.

Every human being must find his own way to cope with severe loss, and the only job of a true friend is to facilitate whatever method he chooses.

My dad passed away before my freshman year, and it altered how I thought. I was depressed - I didn't hang out with my friends. I worked through it by dancing.

In my life, I've dealt with tragedy.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

I know I was very unstable and unhappy all through my life. I lost my mother and then my father. Losing Dad was like losing the bearings of my life. My sisters took it badly, but I took it worse. Throughout my lean phases, Dad was like a solid rock, supporting me, whether it was work, or my jail term.

In the beginning, when I first found out I had a disease that was incurable, emotionally I had to get used to the idea of being sick before I could think about making any other major decisions in my life.

I don't deal with death very well. My brother, John Candy, my dad, my mom, Brandon Tartikoff just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, you lose a lot of people in your life, and that's one thing I am constantly working on - pain management.

The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings.