Top 35 Roz Chast Quotes

It cracks me up to see these ads for TV – for Depends or for glue for your dentures. The people in them look 55 with a hint of gray. Where are the people who are falling apart? We don’t see that.

I don’t like holidays. And I don’t like crowds of people. I don’t like noise.

My works were not – and they still aren’t – single panel gags with a punch line underneath them. I like a lot of those cartoons; I just don’t draw them.

I don’t like anything that looks gelatinous – really weirds me out. But when I was a kid, I used to get very, very upset if anything had a kind of chalky texture; like, certain kinds of cottage cheese I know have a weird chalkiness.

I think of my drawing style like handwriting: it’s a mix of whatever handwriting you’re born with, plus bits and pieces you’ve pilfered from other people around you.

I used to think of the cartoons as a magazine within a magazine. First you go through and read all the cartoons, and then you go back and read the articles.

Sometimes, you know – I think, with a lot of things, at the time, everything is extremely upsetting, and then you look back on it, and it actually can be sort of funny.

I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason.

I think, especially with my parents, I wanted to remember who they were. I wanted to remember all of it. I didn’t want to purge myself of it. I wanted to remember it.

My life is so boring that your brains are going to melt and come out of your eyes.

I’ve had people ask me if it would have been easier to take care of your parents if you had siblings, and I think it’s 50/50. I know people who have siblings, and there is a lot of acrimony because somebody always feels that they are doing more than the other person.

The wonderful thing about the cartoon form is it’s a combination of words and pictures. You don’t have to choose, and the contribution of the two often winds up being greater than the sum of its parts.

My parents were fine at 85. So 85’s nothing. 100 is another thing. I have a friend whose mother is about to turn 101, and it’s not great.

One way of paying tribute to my parents was ‘bearing witness’ as the Quakers do – writing down everything that was happening instead of turning my back on it and pretending that it was all great.

Grime is not like messiness or some fingerprints on a cabinet; it takes a long time to accumulate.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to hook rugs. A wonderful artist named Leslie Giuliani taught me how. The nice thing is you can change it as you go along.

I love detail, like drawing what’s on top of someone’s coffee table. Maybe there’s a little bowl of butterscotch candies on it, next to the four TV remotes.

I’m sure that my parents’ behavior has entered my work, I’m sorry to say. I don’t think you need to have a difficult childhood to be funny, but it helps.

It was deeply interesting to observe my mother closely and to draw her. During those last months, she wasn’t speaking much, if at all, and it was a way for me to be with her. It felt very natural.

There’s something about most phobias where there’s a tiny, tiny corner where you think this really actually could happen.

For me, drawing was an outlet. No one in school said, ‘Oh, she can do sports,’ or, ‘She’s pretty,’ but I could draw.

I don’t like going into the basement. I’m always afraid that something’s going to blow up.

I think when your parents die, it is kind of like a moving sidewalk: you’re not just on the sideline and watching them go by. You know, you’re going to the same place they are.

Sunday, there’s not a lot of structure. I might spend an hour thinking about why I don’t exercise, and feeling very guilty about not exercising. I tried running, over 10 years ago. It didn’t really take.

My kids always joked that I spent more time cooking the birds’ food than I have cooking for them. And it’s probably true.

I think that children’s books should be censored not for references to sex but for references to diseases. I mean, who didn’t think after reading ‘Madeline’ that they were going to get appendicitis?

Childhood – that was not my favorite time in my life.

I cannot stand superheroes. I do not understand any of its appeal. It has just bored me to death since I was a little kid.

When my father died, my mother was still alive. And I think when your second parent dies, there is that shock: ‘Oh man, I’m an orphan.’ There’s also this relief: It’s done; it’s finished; it’s over.

Being female was just one more way I felt different and weird. I was also a young ‘un, and also my cartoons were not like typical ‘New Yorker’ cartoons.

I like being able to go grocery shopping and not feel that I’m fighting a thousand people.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

I don’t put myself through that nauseating experience of looking at someone’s face while they go through your stuff. Ugh! It’s just horrible! It gives me the cringes to even think about it.

I have an African gray parrot; her name is Eli. We thought she was a boy. And a blue-streaked lory named Marco. He’s 10. And a yellow and green parakeet, Petey. He’s very cute, but he’s getting old.

My parents scrimped and saved all their lives, to the point where my mother used a disgusting old oven mitt that was stained and partly patched together with a skirt I made in seventh grade.