As A Kid, All I Thought About

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.

Once A Little Boy Sent Me A Charming Card With A Little Drawing On It. I Loved It. I Answer All My Children’s Letters — Sometimes Very Hastily — But This One I Lingered Over. I Sent Him A Card And I Drew A Picture Of A Wild Thing On It. I Wrote, “dear Jim: I Loved Your Card.” Then I Got A Letter Back From His Mother And She Said, “jim Loved Your Card So Much He Ate It.” That To Me Was One Of The Highest Compliments I’ve Ever Received. He Didn’t Care That It Was An Original Maurice Sendak Drawing Or Anything. He Saw It, He Loved It, He Ate It.

My Sister Had Her Own Room. She Also Had Innumerable Boyfriends. I Had A Yo-yo Collection That Was Beyond Belief, And The Reason I Had It Was Mostly That I Would Stand In The Doorway Of The Living Room Watching Her And Her Boyfriend. Finally She Caught On How To Get This Kid Out Of The Way. Give Him A Yo-yo!

One Of The Beauties Of Being An Artist Is That You Can Create A Whole New World, With Circumstances That Are Better In Your Invented World Than They Are In The Real World.

I Feel It In Me Like A Woman Having A Baby, All That Life Churning Inside Me. I Feel It Every Day; It Moves, Stretches, Yawns. It's Getting Ready To Be Born. It Knows Exactly What It Is.