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" I don't think any of my kids' books talk down to kids. "
Roz Chast
Think
Talk
Any
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Mother
She
Way
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Alive
Great
Done
" In Brooklyn, I don't feel that I'm holding up people with briefcases if I catch a stroller wheel in the sidewalk. "
Roz Chast
Up
People
Wheel
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Way
Down
Back
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Experience
Myself
Looking
" Grime is not like messiness or some fingerprints on a cabinet; it takes a long time to accumulate. "
Roz Chast
Like
Some
Long Time
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Understand
Bored
Stand
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Mother
School
Teacher
" Even if you don't have any dishes, you need a celery dish. "
Roz Chast
Dishes
Any
Dish
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Think
Peaceful
Pain
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Detail
Love
Drawing
" I think I have a habit of, in my head, taking notes on whatever, you know, whether they're verbal or pictorial or just making a note of things as they're happening. "
Roz Chast
Think
You
Know
" For me, drawing was an outlet. No one in school said, 'Oh, she can do sports,' or, 'She's pretty,' but I could draw. "
Roz Chast
Me
Sports
Said
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Culture
Think
Always
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Why
Exercise
Feeling
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Thought
Yellow
Cute
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Pictures
You
Choose
" 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. "
Roz Chast
You
Moving
Know
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Line
Still
Single
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Father
Mother
Man
" I love my parents. I did love them. It's complicated. "
Roz Chast
Them
Parents
Love
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Look
Me
People
" My life is so boring that your brains are going to melt and come out of your eyes. "
Roz Chast
Boring
Out
My Life
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Me
See
Falling
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Parents
Together
Me
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Way
Like
Weird
" I don't like holidays. And I don't like crowds of people. I don't like noise. "
Roz Chast
Crowds
Holidays
Noise
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Upset
Weird
Me
" 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. "
Roz Chast
Funny
Parents
Sorry
" I just really love the cartoon form. I love the plasticity of it. "
Roz Chast
Really
Cartoon
Form