Quotes from Roz Chast

It's really easy to be patient and sympathetic with someone when it's theoretical, or only for a little while. It's a lot harder to deal with someone's craziness when it's constant. . . .

Manhattan is a narrow island surrounded by various miscellaneous items.

Never put bananas in the refrigerator.

Many terrible things begin with B: blindness, boilers, bats, bridges, and brain tumors. But no one brings any of those to a party to up the fun quotient. When I look at a balloon, all I see is an imminent explosion. Where's the fun in that?

My rabies fear started with To Kill a Mockingbird, the same way my appendicitis fear started with Madeline, and my brain tumor fear started with Death Be Not Proud. On an ideal planet, children's books wouldn't be censored for references to sex, but for illness.

But we can't lead our lives in fear of what might be. So live each day to its utmost, only then will you be free. (Poem by Chast's mother)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

You might have a worry that's so stupid it just peters out by itself, like a bad investment.