"There is a story that I can't prove, but I was told that a very early age, my parents dressed me all in white from top to toe, so that if God was watching, He would have thought me already an angel and would not pluck me. It's a religious custom or superstition from the old country. I wouldn't die, in other words. I would be a fraudulent angel."

- Maurice Sendak, in an interview with Terry Gross