Erma Bombeck Quotes

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

Before we sent kids to computer camps and told them they were having a good time, there was imagination among the human species.

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

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

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest.

The fact was I didn't want to look my age, but I didn't want to act the age I wanted to look either. I also wanted to grow old enough to understand that sentence.

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

I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.

Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.

I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.

Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.

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.

Last year I gave seventy-four phone hours to soliciting baked goods for the Bake-A-Rama. I was named Top Call Girl by the League.

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.

Not everyone is comfortable with the kissing ritual. My husband is one of them. Her refuses to press lips with anyone except his wife, mother, and dog. If someone wanted to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he would refuse until he had been formally introduced.

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.

My mind works . . . two boobs never get me a job.

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

To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children.

The bad times I can handle. It's the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going going to drop?

Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved.

I used everything you gave me.

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

Never order food in excess of your body weight.

Cats invented self-esteem.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.

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.

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I'll tell them: I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home. ... I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, 'I stole this.' ... But most of all I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet he's treading water.

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.

I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.

Cats invented self-esteem; there is not an insecure bone in their body.

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.

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

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

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

In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

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

There are few things in this world more satisfying than having your son teach you how to play tennis, unless it is having a semi-truck run over your foot.

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

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.