Great Throughts Treasury

"I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do."

"I can't believe I've turned into a typical old man. I can't believe it. I was young just minutes ago."

"I did not know how to paint a mural. I did not know how to prepare the surface. There was nobody from the Renaissance around who could advise me, and I did the best I could."

"I can't read the papers anymore. I just feel sorry for Obama. I want him so much to win. I would do anything to help him win. He's a decent, wonderful man. And these Republican schnooks are so horrible. They'd be comical if they weren't not funny."

"I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can?t stop them. They leave me and I love them more."

"I certainly don't spell it out. But they have to know it's possible things are bad. But, they are surrounded by people who love them and will protect them but cannot hide the fact that there is something bad."

"I didn?t want them to be traditional monsters, like griffins and gorillas and such like. I wanted them to be very, very personal. It had to come out of my own particular life. And I remember it took a very long time until that gestation occurred and when they began to appear on drawing paper, and they began to be what I liked. And it was only when I had them all that I realized they were all my Jewish relatives."

"I do not remember any proper children's books in my childhood. I was not exposed to them."

"I didn't have much confidence in myself... never."

"I didn't want them to be traditional monsters, like griffins and gorillas and such like. I wanted them to be very, very personal. It had to come out of my own particular life. And I remember it took a very long time until that gestation occurred and when they began to appear on drawing paper, and they began to be what I liked. And it was only when I had them all that I realized they were all my Jewish relatives."

"I don?t believe in children. I don?t believe in childhood. I don?t believe that there?s a demarcation. ?Oh you mustn?t tell them that. You mustn?t tell them that.? You tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it?s true. If it?s true you tell them."

"I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect to see my brother again."

"I don't believe in things literally for children. That's a reduction."

"I don't have kids at all and I thank God that I never did."

"I feel extremely vulnerable."

"I don't need faith."

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

"I feel like I don't have a lot of time left."

"I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning."

"I had a brother who was my savior, made my childhood bearable."

"I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future... they may well be... I will be dead."

"I hate people."

"I hate them. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book."

"I have a good life."

"I have a little tiny Emily Dickinson so big that I carry in my pocket everywhere. And you just read three poems of Emily. She is so brave. She is so strong. She is such a sexy, passionate, little woman. I feel better."

"I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It?s my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpening exercises."

"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... What I dread is the isolation... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready."

"I have to accept my role. I will never kill myself like Vincent Van Gogh. Nor will I paint beautiful water lilies like Monet. I can't do that. I'm in the idiot role of being a kiddie book person."

"I never set out to write books for children. I don't have a feeling that I'm going to save children, or my life is devoted to them. I'm not Hans Christian Andersen. No one's going to make a statue in the park with a lot of scrambling kids climbing up me. I won't have it."

"I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I'm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer."

"I have this idiot name tag which says 'controversial.'"

"I often went to bed without supper 'cause I hated my mother's cooking. So, to go to bed without supper was not a torture to me. If she was gonna hurt me, she'd make me eat."

"I mean, being a child was being a child, was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind. So I didn't want to be a child."

"I remember how much - when I was a small boy I was taken to see a version of 'Peter Pan.' I detested it. I mean, the sentimental idea that anybody would want to remain a boy."

"I only have one subject. The question I am obsessed with is: How do children survive?"

"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"

"I stress character, character, character. And for authors to go where you want; go where you will. Children will go everywhere."

"I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

"I teach."

"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 goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life."

"I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard."

"I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be."

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

"I was developing a child who I recognized as myself as a child, from my observations of other children around me in Brooklyn. We were wild creatures. We did things that were objectionable."

"I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist."

"I wanted my wild things to be frightening. But why? It was probably at this point that I remembered how I detested my Brooklyn relatives as a small child. They came almost every Sunday, and there was my week-long anxiety about their coming the next Sunday... They'd lean way over with their bad teeth and hairy noses, and say something threatening like "You're so cute I could eat you up." And I knew if my mother didn't hurry up with the cooking, they probably would."

"I was miserable as a kid."

"I was talking about kids I knew and me. A book, an American book, where the child actually daunts his mother and threatens her. No way. No way. And then on top of that, she puts him in a room and denies him food. No way. Mamas never do that kinda thing. Kids never get pissed at their parents. Unheard of. And the worst offense, he comes home. She leaves food for him. And he's not punished. Not punished."

"I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence."

"I wasn't gonna paint. And I wasn't gonna do ostentatious drawings. I wasn't gonna have gallery pictures. I was gonna hide somewhere where nobody would find me and express myself entirely. I'm like a guerrilla warfare in my best books."