I don't know a lot of cartoonists who laugh a lot. I think when we hear a joke we just get still like a dog who smells an animal. It becomes about is… - Liana Finck

I think I don't write fiction because I don't really know how to invent characters. I just know how to put myself into a character. So even when I read the Torah, I can't really fathom an old man with a beard Creator. I can only fathom kind of a childish, sweet, very flawed person taking a lot of joy in making things and then feeling really angry at herself for not making something better.

My grandma gave me the “Bintel Brief” book that she had—this collection of letters that was published in 1971—that’s when all the jadedness fell away. I was transported...The book (“Bintel Brief”) is a collection of short stories based on letters written to the Yiddish advice column “A Bintel Brief” that ran in the newspaper the Forward beginning in 1906. The letters were very intense—they were by new immigrants to the United States from Eastern Europe, and they deal with a lot of life-or-death issues—but they are also funny, weird, and sweet.

I think of myself as very consciously following in the footsteps of Roz (Chast) and Liza (Donnelly) and more recently Carolita Johnson and Emily Flake. I do think of myself as a woman cartoonist in a historically men’s world. But very nice men.