Roz Chast

“My parents were very, very close; they pretty much grew up together. They were born in 1912. They were each other's only boyfriend and girlfriend. They were - to use a contemporary term I hate - co-dependent, and they had me very late. So they had their way of doing things, and they reinforced each other.”

“Even if you don't have any dishes, you need a celery dish.”

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

“In Brooklyn, I don't feel that I'm holding up people with briefcases if I catch a stroller wheel in the sidewalk.”

“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.”

“I don't think any of my kids' books talk down to kids.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you’re a kid again, poking around in your parents’ closet, only this time there’s no chance of getting in trouble, so you don’t have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew.”

“It's like a 'chicken or the egg' thing. We're all part of the culture. We're reflecting it; we're changing it. So, yeah, I think culture is always changing.”

“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'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.”

“I've done a lot of death cartoons - tombstones, Grim Reaper, illness, obituaries... I'm not great at analyzing things, but my guess is that maybe the only relief from the terror of being alive is jokes.”

“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 don't like cartoons that take place in Nowhereville. I like cartoons where I know where they're happening.”

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

“I just really love the cartoon form. I love the plasticity of it.”

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

“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.”