Erma Bombeck Quotes

“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.”

“I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food”

“There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else”

“A child needs your love most when he deserves it least”

“Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.”

“I've exercised with women so thin, buzzards followed them to their cars.”

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

“Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.”

“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.”

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere”

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”

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

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”

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

“Housework can kill you if done right.”

“Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?”

“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.”

“All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”

“No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.”

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”

“Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.”

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”

“Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.”

“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”

“When humor goes, there goes civilization.”

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.”

“A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.”

“If you can't make it better, you can laugh at it.”

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

“Written on her tombstone: "I told you I was sick.”

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

“As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.”

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

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

“Laugh now, cry later.”

“There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.”

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.”

“I come from a home where gravy is a beverage.”

“Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.”

“Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

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

“Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”

“Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.”

“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.”

“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?”

“It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows”

“Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip”

“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.”

“When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.”

“If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?”

“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.”

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

“Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The grass is always greener over the septic tank.”