Quotes from Roz Chast

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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 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.

In Brooklyn, I don't feel that I'm holding up people with briefcases if I catch a stroller wheel in the sidewalk.

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

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.

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

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 wish that, at the end of life, when things were truly done, there was something to look forward to. Something more pleasure-oriented. Perhaps opium, or heroin. So you become addicted. So what? All-you-can-eat ice cream parlors for the extremely aged. Big art pictures books and music. EXTREME palliative care, for when you've had it with everything else: the x-rays, the MRIs, the boring food, and the pills that don't do anything at all. Would that be so bad?

I don't want to be a PULSATING PIECE OF PROTOPLASM!

I feel about Manhattan the way I feel about a book, a TV series, a movie, a play, an artist, a song, a food, a whatever that I love. I want to tell you about it so that maybe you will love it, too. I'm not worried about it being 'ruined' by too many people 'discovering' it. Manhattan's been ruined since 1626 , when Peter Minuit bought it from Native Americans for $24.00.