Maurice Sendak, interviewed by Eric Wagner for The Times
After a day spent trawling shops in Brighton trying to find CDs by Paul Westerberg in response to a Christmas request, I sat in front of Road Trip on BBC1, listlessly turning pages in the day's papers, until I came across this:
?You can?t write for children,? he says. ?There?s no such thing. It?s a financial industry, made up. People say, what?s it like to be a children ?s book writer? And I don?t know. I do seem to do it. That?s what I do: but not because I think children are wonderful and I want to save the world ? like I am the Mother Teresa of children! Except there?s something in me that?s intuitively tuned in. I?ve never stopped being there. In the children?s book form, which seems innocuous enough, I can burrow in like a bug and do all I want to do, hidden by the form. It?s a great hiding place. You can do all the guerrilla warfare you like. And I did from the beginning.?
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