As part of its annual “The Lives They Lived” issue, a collection of obituaries for people who passed away during the previous year, the New York Times Magazine drew on an interview with author and illustrator Maurice Sendak that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in September 2011. In a video on the Times’s website, illustrations by Christoph Niemann accompany a touching clip from the interview, in which Sendak talked with Terry Gross about his athiesm, death, and getting older.
“There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: I am in love with the world,” Sendak said. He also told Gross that of all the interviewers he knew, only she brought out such reflections in him. Sendak died May 8, 2012.