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" 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. "

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" 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

People

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

See

Falling

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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 don't like holidays. And I don't like crowds of people. I don't like noise. "

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

Roz Chast

Feel

Fighting

" 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? "

" I love my parents. I did love them. It's complicated. "

" I sometimes suffer from insomnia. And when I can't fall asleep, I play what I call the alphabet game. "

" 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

" My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them. "

" 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, with my cartoons, the parent-like figures are kind of my own archeypes of parents, and they're taken a little bit from my parents and other people's parents, and parents I have read about, and parents I dreamed about, and parents that I made up. "

" 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. "

" 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

Sports

Said

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

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

Roz Chast

Afraid

Always

" 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'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. "

" Childhood - that was not my favorite time in my life. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "