"You need to read the whole thing because in discrete doses, Sendak’s mordant jokes can come off as merely shrill, as when he discusses his ardently held fantasy to arrange a visit to the White House, don a suicide bomb and vaporize George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, their wives, and himself. (“And then we’ll blow ourselves up, and I’d be a hero ... ‘To hell with the kiddie books: He killed Bush!’”) Or his contention that, after receiving a bad review from Salman Rushdie, he reached out to Iran’s Ayatollah on direct-dial. (“…I called him and I said, ‘Kill that man.’ And he said, ‘OK, Maurice, anything you say.’”) Or his pitched loathing of Christmas (“gross, vulgar, shitty”), the publishing industry (“I want to kill everybody”) and his irrational hatred of celebrities like Alec Baldwin (“That fat fuck”), Steven Spielberg (“A pile of shit”) and Meryl Streep (“Gornischt, genug, genug!”)"
Full article: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112668/maurice-sendaks-shocking-final-interview