Maira Kalman

Maira Kalman – Life, Work, and Memorable Quotes

Maira Kalman – Discover the life, art, writing, and philosophy of Maira Kalman: the whimsical author-illustrator whose visual essays and books explore the human condition. Learn her biography, creative style, and favorite quotes.

Introduction

Maira Kalman (born November 15, 1949; some sources list 1949) is an American writer, illustrator, designer, and visual storyteller whose work blends humor, observation, and philosophical reflection. Her illustrations and texts—whether in children’s books, essays for The New Yorker, or visual journals—offer an affectionate and often quirky lens on everyday life. She captures the strange, poetic, and absurd in the mundane, making her one of the most beloved and original voices in contemporary illustration and narrative art.

In the following, we delve into her early life and influences, creative career, her approach to storytelling and art, her legacy, and some of her most evocative quotes.

Early Life and Background

Maira Kalman was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1949. Her parents were Sara Berman (originally from Belarus) and Pesach Berman. When she was about four years old, her family emigrated to the United States, settling in Riverdale, Bronx, New York City.

In New York, Kalman attended the High School of Music & Art (now part of LaGuardia High School) where she studied art. She later studied English literature at New York University (NYU).

Her early childhood was shaped by her mother’s influence. Sara Berman reportedly devoted much energy to cultivating a sense of style, stories, and aesthetic in her family life, which became a recurring thread in Kalman’s later work.

At NYU, she met Tibor Kalman, the graphic designer (later founder of M&Co) whom she married in 1981. Tibor and Maira would remain partners in life and creative influence until his death in 1999 from lymphoma. The couple had two children: Lulu Bodoni and Alexander Onomatopoeia.

Kalman’s upbringing—between Israel and the U.S., between literature and visual art, immersed in stories and objects—laid the foundation for her hybrid approach to creativity.

Career and Achievements

Early involvement with design and M&Co

Although Maira did not officially join M&Co (her husband’s design studio), she played an advisory and conceptual role, contributing ideas, visual sensibility, and support for the firm’s experimental work. M&Co became known for playful, avant-garde graphic and typographic work for clients like Interview magazine, Talking Heads, National Audubon Society, MoMA, and others.

Kalman’s true voice, however, found fuller expression in books and illustration.

Books and Illustration

Kalman is the author and/or illustrator of more than 30 books for adults and children. Her repertoire includes children’s literature (often combining whimsical visuals and poetic narratives) and illustrated essays and visual memoirs.

Some notable works and series:

• Stay Up Late (1985) — one of her earlier children’s books.

• The Max books (Max Stravinsky, the poet-dog) — a recurring character in her children’s publishing.

• Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of John J. Harvey (2002), a tribute to a New York fireboat active during 9/11.

• The Principles of Uncertainty — an illustrated blog for The New York Times (2006–07) later collected as a book.

• And the Pursuit of Happiness — another illustrated series for NYT compiled into a volume (2010).

• My Favorite Things (2014) — a book showing her personal objects and reflections in collaboration with the Cooper-Hewitt museum.

• Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything (2014) — bringing her visual narrative style to a historical figure.

• Beloved Dog — a personal book about her dog Pete and reflections on love, loss, and memory.

In addition, she has illustrated new editions or covers for books (e.g. The Elements of Style) and collaborated with authors like Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) on projects like Girls Standing on Lawns, blending vintage photographs with her paintings.

Contributions to Journalism & Visual Essays

Kalman has been a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, producing cover illustrations, illustrated essays, and visual commentary. Her visual essays often function like diaries: using drawings, handwritten text, and observations to document how she sees the world.

Her illustrated columns for The New York Times (e.g. The Principles of Uncertainty, And the Pursuit of Happiness) blurred the boundary between personal essay and visual art, making her a pioneer of the “visual diarist” genre.

Kalman has also exhibited her work in galleries and museums, such as The Jewish Museum (exhibition Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)) and other venues.

In 2025, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators.

Style, Themes & Creative Approach

Kalman’s creative approach is marked by several distinctive qualities:

• Observation & walking: She frequently describes walking, noticing small details, and turning everyday objects or scenes into inspiration.

• Humor + melancholy: Her tone often balances whimsy, humor, vulnerability, and reflection on deeper themes like memory, loss, time, and identity.

• Embrace of imperfection & mess: She values surprises, spontaneity, and the “truth in the mess,” resisting over-control in her work.

• Interplay of text and image: Her work is inseparable from the combination of illustration, handwritten notes, quotes, and visual play.

• Objects as narrative anchors: She often focuses on everyday objects—suitcases, shoes, kitchen tools, fading ephemera—as entry points into stories and memory.

• Multi-disciplinary endeavors: Kalman crosses boundaries—writing, illustration, design, installation, performance—and treats her life and art as intertwined rather than separate.

Her work resists neat categorization; she once admitted that she does not like “plots” in the conventional sense and dislikes narrative beginning–middle–end structures.

Legacy and Influence

Maira Kalman has carved a unique space in the world of letters and visual art. Her legacy includes:

• Expanding what an “author” can be: She demonstrates how writing and visual art can merge organically, inspiring a new generation of visual essayists and graphic storytellers.

• Democratizing aesthetic attention: By focusing on everyday life and modest objects, she shows that wonder, poetry, and meaning can be found in the ordinary.

• Bridging children’s and adult work: Her versatility across audiences underscores how the sensibility of play, curiosity, and reflection can move between genres.

• Influencing contemporary illustration: Many illustrators cite her as a touchstone for combining vulnerability, quirky aesthetics, and personal voice.

• Championing humility in creativity: Her open acknowledgment of self-doubt, revising, and the messiness of creation makes her a relatable figure for many artists.

• Recognition by institutions: Her exhibitions, museum retrospectives, design honors (e.g. AIGA Medal) and lifetime achievement awards confirm her stature in both art and publishing worlds.

Memorable Quotes from Maira Kalman

Below are selected quotes that capture her voice, wit, and insight:

“My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set …”

“Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.”

“In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.”

“I’m in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I’m sure that it’s going to be a complete disaster. I’m going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet Earth.”

“My short attention span has allowed me a life of diversity in work and place.”

“The most inspiring objects are books. I have about 5,000 volumes in my home library. It’s an unending source of visuals and ideas.”

“I don’t believe in politics; I don’t understand any of it.”

“I don’t like plots. I don’t know what a plot means. I can’t stand the idea of anything that starts in the beginning — … ‘beginning, middle and end.’”

These quotes reveal her fascination with uncertainty, process, imperfection, and the poetic potential of everyday life.

Lessons & Takeaways

From Maira Kalman’s life and work, one can draw several lessons:

1. Embrace curiosity in the ordinary
   Kalman’s practice shows how paying attention to small details can fuel a lifetime of narrative richness.

2. Allow art and life to intermingle
   She does not separate her routines, obsessions, objects, and daydreams from her creative practice—they feed into one another.

3. Permit imperfection
   She continually reminds us that messes, uncertainty, and change can be more truthful than pristine control.

4. Cultivate multiple modalities
   Writing, drawing, design, performance—she moves between modes freely, reminding us that creative identity need not be constrained.

5. Be humble about vision
   Her awareness of self-doubt and panic before creation encourages others to keep going even when work feels fraught.

6. Connect across generations
   Her ability to speak both to children and adults (through visual storytelling) highlights how core human sensibilities—wonder, memory, humor—transcend age.

Conclusion

Maira Kalman is more than just an author or illustrator; she is a visual thinker, a poetic diarist, and a curator of everyday wonder. Her voice is an invitation: to notice, to wander, to embrace the mess, to let uncertainty be part of the story. Her life bridges design, memoir, children’s literature, and essay, all while rooted in humor, humility, and a deep love for the world’s strange beauty.