Roz Chast
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.
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.
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.
I sometimes suffer from insomnia. And when I can't fall asleep, I play what I call the alphabet game.
I like being able to go grocery shopping and not feel that I'm fighting a thousand people.
Even if you don't have any dishes, you need a celery dish.
There's something about most phobias where there's a tiny, tiny corner where you think this really actually could happen.
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.
I don't like cartoons that take place in Nowhereville. I like cartoons where I know where they're happening.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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?
Grime is not like messiness or some fingerprints on a cabinet; it takes a long time to accumulate.
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.
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 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 just really love the cartoon form. I love the plasticity of it.
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.
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.
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 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.
For me, drawing was an outlet. No one in school said, 'Oh, she can do sports,' or, 'She's pretty,' but I could draw.
I love my parents. I did love them. It's complicated.
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.
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.
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.
Childhood - that was not my favorite time in my life.
I don't like going into the basement. I'm always afraid that something's going to blow up.
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 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.
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.
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.
I don't think any of my kids' books talk down to kids.
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'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 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.
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 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.
My life is so boring that your brains are going to melt and come out of your eyes.
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.
My kids always joked that I spent more time cooking the birds' food than I have cooking for them. And it's probably true.
In Brooklyn, I don't feel that I'm holding up people with briefcases if I catch a stroller wheel in the sidewalk.
I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason.
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.