Roz Chast Quotes

My parents were extremely reluctant. When my father was clearly dying, my mother refused to acknowledge it.

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

I think when you really love something, you notice the minutiae.

It's almost selfishness, taking care of your mental health. You can't just not do it.

Theres something about most phobias where theres a tiny, tiny corner where you think this really actually could happen.

I noticed that I used to go to second hand shops and flea markets and find funny, cute things, but now I go into those stores, and I think, This is dead people's stuff. This is all, like, somebody cleaned out their parents' house, and I don't want any of it. If I didn't want it from my parents, I don't want it from your parents.

I had the impression in art school that cartooning was thought of as a lesser art than painting because cartoons are reproduced, so the "work" is not the single thing like a painting, but instead is the reproduced image.

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

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.

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

I think maybe to survive, I mean to just get through the day - I'm not saying that everything is hilariously funny.

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 gave up on ever trying to get 'my way.' I barely knew it existed.

The fact that cartoons are reproduced doesn't mean anything to me as far as whether they are "real art" or not.

You could pray all you want that you have a massive stroke while you're working and die, but possibly that won't happen, and you'll be in this bed, and somebody's going to have to clean you up.

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

I love seeing original cartoons. You get to see the artist's corrections, like erasures or Wite-Out or patches, and you get to see the artist's line in better detail, and what kind of ink they use - whether they like a cold black or a warm black, and what kind of paper they like, how big or small they like to draw - art nerd stuff like that.

Even under the best of circumstances - in twenty-first century America at least - caring for elderly parents ain't no place for sissies.

A friend of mine gave me a very good piece of advice, which is if you don't think your kids are going to want it, don't take it.

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

You would open a drawer, which my father had jammed full of newspapers, and the bottom would drop out. There were buttons and screws and nails and bottle caps and jar lids – the drawer of jar lids! Why? Because they're made of metal and maybe there'll be another war and we'll need the metal. A friend of mine – I quote him in the book – says, 'You have found the source of the river eBay.'

I putter. I nurse old grudges. I fold origami while nursing old grudges. I think about the past. I wonder if there’s any grudges I should start.

I used to love to draw things that made me laugh or made friends laugh. When I was 13 or 14, I started thinking, This is what I like to do more than anything else.

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