Maurice Sendak Said Killing Bush Would Have Been "Wonderful" Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Maurice Sendak may have been even wilder than his "wild things." In one of the children's book author's last interviews before he died of a stroke in May, Sendak said he thought about trying to assassinate former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. "Bush was president, I thought, "Be brave. Tie a bomb to your shirt. Insist on going to the White House. And I want to have a big hug with the vice president, definitely. And his wife, and the president, and his wife, and anybody else that can fit into the love hug,"" Sendak told The Comics Journal's founder Gary Groth in an interview that will be published in the magazine's next edition. "And then we'll blow ourselves up, and I'd be a hero," Sendak continued. "It would have been a very brave and wonderful thing," said Sendak, who wrote the whimsical "Where the Wild Things Are." Sendak has had his share of unorthodox comments, although none perhaps as violent as pondering a presidential assassination. He called former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich "an idiot of great renown." "There is something so hopelessly gross and vile about him that it's hard to take him seriously," Sendak told comedian Stephen Colbert in January. And in 2008, shortly after his 80th birthday, Sendak told the New York Times, "I hate people," adding that he would rather spend time with his dog Herman.