Quotes from Roz Chast

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't like holidays. And I don't like crowds of people. I don't like noise.

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.

For me, drawing was an outlet. No one in school said, 'Oh, she can do sports,' or, 'She's pretty,' but I could draw.

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

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 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.

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.

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