Maurice Sendak

He spends his days pondering his heroes: Mozart, Keats, Blake, Melville and Dickinson. He admires and yearns for their ability to be private, the ability to be alone, the ability to follow some spiritual course not written down by anybody.

Last year Mr. Sendak told Emma Brockes, a reporter for The Guardian, who asked him about electronic books: 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.

Some of Mr. Sendak’s relatives died in the Holocaust, and from an early age he was acquainted with death. I cry a lot because I miss people, he once said. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

Mr. Sendak, like Max, was the king of all wild things. It’s impossible not to miss him already.

-NYT, quoting Maurice Sendak