A biography for Roz Chasthasn’t been written yet.
“You might have a worry that's so stupid it just peters out by itself, like a bad investment.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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 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 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 cannot stand superheroes. I do not understand any of its appeal. It has just bored me to death since I was a little kid.”
“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.”
“Childhood - that was not my favorite time in my life.”
“I love my parents. I did love them. It's complicated.”
“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 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?”
“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.”
“I don't like holidays. And I don't like crowds of people. I don't like noise.”
“I can't even look at daily comic strips. And I hate sitcoms because they don't seem like real people to me: they're props that often say horrible things to each other, which I don't find funny. I have to feel like they're real people.”
“I had to get good grades and do well in school - my mother was an assistant principal and my father was a teacher - and they took this very seriously.”
“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.”