“I was born in 1928. Same year as Mickey Mouse, but he made out better—straight to Hollywood, straight to the cosmetic department. I did not approve of his buying into all that crap and letting his soul get despoiled. I remained poor and depressed, as a Brooklyn child should. Mickey wasn’t depressed but anyone who looked like him should have been. He became a schmuck, a very famous schmuck. And God knows I adored him, but I was a schmuck, too. I lived in Brooklyn.”

--Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” to Marianna Cook, in a New Yorker Postcript, “Wild Things,” May 21, 2012. It's unfortunately an abstract of the article, not the whole thing. Fortunately, you can subscribe to The New Yorker, and should. And if you haven't seen Sendak in his two-part interview with Stephen Colbert, you should check that out, too. Sendak may be the best partner Colbert's ever had.

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