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" 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. "

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" 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 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. "

" 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

People

Wheel

" 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

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

Roz Chast

Afraid

Always

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" Did you know that you can live on Ensure for a year? A person can live for a really long time just lying in bed and drinking Ensure - way longer than you think. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

Roz Chast

Some

Long Time

" 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

" 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'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. "