Quotes by Erma Bombeck

The advantage of having only one child is that you always know who did it.

What if they mispronounce my last name and everyone laughs? What if my teacher doesn't make her D's like Mom taught me? What if I spend the whole day without a friend?

No doubt about it... every day in every way my game grows stronger. I saw one enthusiast the other day playing with his racket out of the press. I'll have to try that.

I have paid as much as $300 a night to throw up in a sink shaped like a seashell.

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say 'What light?' and two more to say, 'I didn't turn it on.'

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced on television.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, I used everything you gave me.

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.

Graduation day is tough for adults.
They go to the ceremony as parents.
They come home as contemporaries.
After twenty-two years of child-raising,
they are unemployed.

It's frightening to wake up one morning and discover that while you were asleep you went out of style.

I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt, and fail.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

Christmas Shopping: Wouldn't it be wonderful to find one gift that you didn't have to dust, that had to be used right away, that was practical, fit everyone, was personal and would be remembered for a long time? I penciled in Gift certificate for a flu shot.

If I raised my hand to wipe the hair out of my children's eyes, they'd flinch and call their attorney.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

Never loan your car to anyone to whom you've given birth.

Having a delivery covered by Medicare just isn't going to fly. It's too risky for a woman to put a baby down and not remember where she left it.

I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.

You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I'll show you an orphan.

It is my theory you can't get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

Every puppy should have a boy.

Spend at least one Mother's Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him.

We even switched to a newly-formed church across the town that gave one hundred and twenty trading stamps each time we attended. (We now worship a brown and white chicken with a sunburst on its chest.).

If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.

People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.

For the first two years of a child's life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.

A member of the committee slapped a name tag over my left bosom. What shall we name the other one? I smiled. She was not amused.

We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.

When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.

Housework can kill you if done right.

Adults can take a simple holiday for Children and screw it up. What began as a presentation of simple gifts to delight and surprise children around the Christmas tree has culminated in a woman unwrapping six shrimp forks from her dog, who drew her name.

A fitting room to me has always been like a confessional ... where my body and my contrition take up the entire room.

Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.

One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.

There is only one thing harder in this world than forgiving. It's to ask forgiveness armed only with, 'I'm sorry'.

The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child.

When they told me I needed a mastectomy, I thought of the thousands of luncheons and dinners I had attended where they slapped a name tag on my left bosom. I always smiled and said, 'Now, what shall we name the other one?' That would no longer be a problem.

I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.

Throughout the years I have set up my own rules about eating food: Never eat anything you can't pronounce. Beware of food that is described as, Some Americans say it tastes like chicken.

My idea of 'roughing it' is when you have to have an extension for your electric blanket.

No One Diets on Thanksgiving.

A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.

I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.

A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It's un-American. It's like Simon without Garfunkel.

Some of the best fiction writers got their start writing airline menus.

In the South Pacific, because of their size, mosquitoes are required to file flight plans.

I read one psychologist's theory that said, Never strike a child in your anger. When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he's recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.

The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.

People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.

We wondered why when a child laughed, he belonged to Daddy, and when he had a sagging diaper that smelled like a landfill, 'He wants his mother.'

With girls, everything looks great on the surface. But beware of drawers that won't open. They contain a three-month supply of dirty underwear, unwashed hose, and rubber bands with blobs of hair in them.

Motherhood isn't just a series of contractions; it's a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being.

I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, Never mind! I'll do it myself.

I lost everything in the post-natal depression.

Remember, you can lead a fifty-seven-year-old body to motherhood, but you can't make it stay awake.

I'm so bored. I went to the food locker yesterday to visit my meat.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

The ultimate in longevity is the Christmas fruitcake. It is a cake made during the holidays with fruits that make it heavier than the stove it is cooked in.

I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet.

I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.

One son appears in stereo -- a transistor in one ear and the phone in the other.

To say, Well, I write when I really get into it is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.

I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.

With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.

With boys, you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane.

Everyone I talked to was a recording-the bank, the elevator, your office, the school, a wrong number. You used to be able to call a wrong number and get a person.

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.

What makes people laugh? ... It's a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who's got one to give.

Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see ... we listen, but never hear ... we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

Why take pride in cooking, when they don't take pride in eating?

Next to hot chicken soup, a tattoo of an anchor on your chest, and penicillin, I consider a honeymoon one of the most overrated events in the world.

It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: This will vary with your microwave. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.

What does it profit a 78-year-old woman to sit around the pool in a bikini if she cannot feed herself?

Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?

With all the precautions and risks that accompany sex today, it sounds about as much fun as walking through a minefield.

The term 'working mother' is redundant.

I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.

Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.

There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. ... Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.

The mole rat is the only rodent born without a fur coat. With a good lawyer, someone would pay for that little oversight.

Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.

When you're lecturing teenagers and they begin to hum and leave the room, you can sense there is hostility.

Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.

She's as funny as a toothache.

Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.

Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation's compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another.

Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.

Not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals.

I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.

Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing real men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.

I hated skiing or any other sport where there was an ambulance waiting at the bottom of the hill.

I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.

Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments.

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

He who laughs.....lasts.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

Written on her tombstone: I told you I was sick.

Maybe you know why a child can reject a hot dog with mustard served on a soft bun at home, yet eat six of them two hours later at fifty cents each.

I never go to a college reunion that I don't come away feeling sorry for all those paunchy, balding jocks trying to hang onto youth. I feel sorry for the men, too.

Friends are annuals that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a perennial that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.

Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, its unplanned, it's full of suprises.

It was a bitter moment for us. We weren't two mature parents. We were just two kids playing grown-up. We still needed Mommy and Daddy's permission, blessings, and money to survive.

Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.

My mother won't admit it, but I've always been a disappointment to her. Deep down inside, she'll never forgive herself for giving birth to a daughter who refuses to launder aluminium foil and use it over again.

Laugh now, cry later.

Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint -- like a heartbeat. And pure love -- why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

All of a sudden, I feel very old and very tired. Maybe when I get to California, the smog, brush fires, floods, and earthquakes will cheer me up.

My sister and I never engaged in sibling rivalry. Our parents weren't that crazy about either one of us.

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.

If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest.

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.