Roz Quotes

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

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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

You know, life's not controllable. you do the best you can with the chances you get. And on you go. ~ Roz Nay

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

Like riding a bike for the first time, sometimes you just have to go for it. If you keep looking forwards and maintain your momentum, it will probably go well. But if you start to doubt yourself and look back, you are more likely to suffer a major wobble followed by a crash. ~ Roz Savage

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. ~ Roz Chast

The Milky Way swooped diagonally across the heavens, reminding me of my utter insignificance, and at the same time my complete interconnection with everything. I was just a tiny speck of consciousness, and yet I was consciousness itself. ~ Roz Savage

Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life. ~ Roz Kaveney

Compared with the awesome might and eternal power of the ocean, no human being can fail to be reminded of their own insignificance. ~ Roz Savage

What's the point of doing something twice when it's been done perfectly the first time? It's the same reason I won't fall in love now. ~ Roz Nay

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

A lot of people feel trapped by circumstance, by the expectations of others or the perception that they need a lot of money. They would like to have a different direction in their lives, but they're held back by fear or desires that are incompatible with that freedom. ~ Roz Savage

Shopping eased the pain. -Hailey, Retail Therapy ~ Roz Bailey

Roz added sheep to Heaven. They would be outside the window, naturally. ~ Margaret Atwood

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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

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. ~ Roz Chast

If anyone else told her to lower her voice, Roz would know what to do: scream louder. ~ Margaret Atwood

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

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

The restorative effect of a tasty dinner is quite remarkable. When the going gets tough, the tough get cooking. ~ Roz Savage

I don't understand it. Why me?"
"Is there ever an answer to that question when men are involved?"
-Candace and Fallon, Chapter 12 ~ Roz Lee

I just used to have a really normal life, working in an office. ~ Roz Savage

Nights were the worst. I'd try to get some sleep, only to be thrown out of bed and dragged out into the compound for another game of "Let's whack Bobby in the dark!" - Bobby Pendragon, RoZ ~ D.J. MacHale

My kids always joked that I spent more time cooking the birds' food than I have cooking for them. And it's probably true. ~ Roz Chast

I was the child at school in second-hand or handmade clothes and, as I grew older, I craved material wealth, a big house and designer clothes. ~ Roz Savage

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

We've got a lifetime of this ahead of us; it's a marathon, not a sprint. ~ Roz Nay

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. ~ Roz Chast

An uncomfortable question popped into Jaya's mind. "Roz, don't take this the wrong way," she began, "but is it possible that you are defective?"

"Don't say that, Jaya!" cried her brother.

"No, it is okay," said the robot. "I have asked myself that same question. I do not feel defective. I feel . . . different. Is being different the same as being defective?"

"I don't think so," said Jaya. "Or else we're all a little defective. ~ Peter Brown

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

You play the cards you're dealt. Everyone does. ~ Roz Nay

Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important. ~ Roz Savage

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. ~ Roz Chast

Honestly I've learned that everything's a competition. And that everyone has an agenda even if they don't admit it. ~ Roz Nay

The truth: after just one novel, I had lost touch with my muse. The quietly desperate, jaded girl in my head had stopped slinging sardonic wit into my psyche. ~ Roz Bailey

She goes off to see a shrink, to see if she can improve herself, make herself over into a new woman, one who no longer gives a shit. She would like that. The shrink is a nice person; Roz likes her. Together the two of them labor over Roz's life as if it's a jigsaw puzzle, a mystery story with a solution at the end. They arrange and rearrange the pieces, trying to get them to come out better. They are hopeful: if Roz can figure out what story she's in, then they will be able to spot the erroneous turns she took, they can retrace her steps, they can change the ending. They work out a tentative plot. ~ Margaret Atwood

Four AM last call proved to me that the late-night hours had a mystical, ethereal quality ripe with dangerous possibilities. ~ Roz Bailey

Codependence means we are depending on something outside of ourselves to provide our sense of wellbeing and are not being true to ourselves and our own feelings. As long as we keep believing that we can make someone else happy or that someone else has the power to make us happy, we are setting ourselves up for frustration, failure, and possibly victimization. ~ Roz Van Meter

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.
(As quoted in Put Your Big Girl Panties on and Deal with it, Roz Van Meter, 2007) ~ Susan Sarandon

I don't like cartoons that take place in Nowhereville. I like cartoons where I know where they're happening. ~ Roz Chast

I don't own designer clothes, or a sports car, or a huge house, but I am seeing the world, experiencing amazing things, and I have become an environmental campaigner. ~ Roz Savage

"Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we're in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!" (modified from a passage in Roz Savage's "Rowing the Atlantic") ~ Roz Savage

Charis disapproves of crass words like shit. Roz has offered poop, but Charis rejected it as too babyish. Her alimentary canal products? Tony has suggested. No, that sounds too coldly intellectual, said Charis. Her Gifts to the Earth. ~ Margaret Atwood

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

Sometimes I think that the sky's just a dark blanket, and behind it is totally bright light. Those stars are just little pinprick holes in the cloth, letting us see what's behind. ~ Roz Nay

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. ~ Roz Chast

A few years ago I wrote two versions of my obituary, the one I wanted and the one I was heading for. They were very different. I realized I needed to make some big changes if I was going to look back and be proud of my life. I am making those changes, and now I have a life worth living. ~ Roz Savage

I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn't. ~ Roz Savage

I don't for a moment think I am any braver or better than anybody else. This is how I attempt to explain what gives me the strength to do what I do; when that thunderbolt of an idea first hit me and inspired me to row across oceans, it filled me with a sense of purpose so strong that it overcame my fears. Even when boredom, frustration, fatigue or despair threatened to overwhelm me, it was that powerful sense of purpose that kept me going. ~ Roz Savage

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

Roz is telling a story. That's what they will do, increasingly in their lives: tell stories. Tonight their stories will be about Zenia. ~ Margaret Atwood

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

I have learned to accept that, in the present moment at least, things are exactly as they are meant to be, and although I cannot control the future any more than I could control the wind and the weather, I can manage it and influence it in a positive way. ~ Roz Savage

Sometimes our emotions get in the way of our ability to make clear decisions and this was one of them. But I don't think you should regret it. Everything happens for a reason. ~ Loni Flowers

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. ~ Roz Chast

There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.
There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance.
There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Cauc ~ Michael Ondaatje

With little going for me other than unstoppable eagerness, a sense of total commitment, and a stubborn refusal to give up on what felt like a divinely ordained scheme, I cast myself upon the waters of the world's oceans. ~ Roz Savage

I am a rolling stone, never in one place for very long. ~ Roz Savage

Manhattan is a narrow island surrounded by various miscellaneous items. ~ Roz Chast

If I ever stop challenging myself, then I am getting lazy and comfortable and I am no longer growing. I hope to use life's challenges as stepping stones to ever greater things. ~ Roz Savage

What then, is dark fantasy? I would argue that it is a genre of fantasy whose protagonists inhabit the world of consensual mundane reality and learn otherwise, not by walking through a portal into some other world, or by being devoured or destroyed irrevocably, but by learning to live with new knowledge and sometimes with new flesh. ~ Roz Kaveney

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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

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

It felt as if everything that had happened so far in my life had been leading me to this point, preparing me for this task, and that I was uniquely equipped to pursue this quest. It was a perfect collision of personality, past experience, purpose, and timing. ~ Roz Savage

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. ~ Roz Chast

I stopped rowing for a moment to glug down some water, but it was warm, tasted of plastic, and failed to refresh. I yearned for an ice-cold drink - preferably one with bubbles and alcohol in it. ~ Roz Savage

Never put bananas in the refrigerator. ~ Roz Chast

Okay. Roz is strong. She's confident and loyal. She's there when I need her.
"Congratulations," I mumbled. "Sounds like you're dating a German shepherd. ~ Jus Accardo

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

You need to be buried deep in the dirt before you can find your bloom. ~ Roz Inga

It's no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are they so much cuter than their elders...but they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents' stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at *your* stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder...I'm not saying I never buy stuff, because I absolutely do. Maybe I'm less naive about the joys of accumulation. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

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. ~ Roz Chast

Brightbill had been Roz's son from the moment she picked up his egg. She had saved him from certain death, and then he had saved her. He was the reason Roz had lived so well for so long. And if she wanted to continue living, if she wanted to be wild again, she needed to be with her family and her friends on her island. So, as Roz raced through the sky, she began computing a plan.
She would get the repairs she needed.
She would escape from her new life.
She would find her way back home. ~ Peter Brown

I'm not claiming to be anything out of the ordinary. I am not especially big or strong or brave or intrepid. ~ Roz Savage