Erma Bombeck

When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t
matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.
– Erma Bombeck

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
– Erma Bombeck

You know you’re a mother when you use your own saliva to clean your child’s face, and when
your child throws up, you catch it.
– Erma Bombeck

Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wears a dress
that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and 30 days later looks like a well-dressed
thermometer.
– Erma Bombeck

Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.
– Erma Bombeck

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.
– Erma Bombeck

Next to a 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.
– Erma Bombeck

An advantage of having only one child is that you always know who did it.
– Erma Bombeck

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
– Erma Bombeck

I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
– Erma Bombeck

If God had meant us to walk around naked, he would never have invented the wicker chair.
– Erma Bombeck

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

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.
– Erma Bombeck

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.
– Erma Bombeck

The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again.
– Erma Bombeck

To me, golf is something you did with your hands while you talked. Unless you smoked. Then
you never had to leave the clubhouse.
– Erma Bombeck

Skiing? I do not participate in any sport that has ambulances at the bottom of the hill.
– Erma Bombeck

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It’s like stealing a two-year-old.
– Erma Bombeck

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

I’m going to stop punishing my children by saying, “Never mind! I’ll do it myself.”
– Erma Bombeck

My second favourite household chore is ironing, my first being hitting my head on the top
bunk bed until I faint.
– Erma Bombeck

Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what.
– Erma Bombeck

He who laughs… lasts.
– Erma Bombeck

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

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they’re finished, I
climb out.
– Erma Bombeck

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
– Erma Bombeck

I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all
accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
– Erma Bombeck

Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.
– Erma Bombeck

A child needs your love most when he deserves it least.
– Erma Bombeck

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.
– Erma Bombeck

Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child.
Then the mother is born.
– Erma Bombeck

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

If a man watches three American football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
– Erma Bombeck

Never accept a drink from a urologist.
– Erma Bombeck

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.
– Erma Bombeck

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
– Erma Bombeck

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.”
– Erma Bombeck

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.
– Erma Bombeck

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.”
– Erma Bombeck

When humor goes, there goes civilization.
– Erma Bombeck

Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.
– Erma Bombeck

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
– Erma Bombeck

One thing they never tell you about child-raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop
of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.
– Erma Bombeck

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.
– Erma Bombeck

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
– Erma Bombeck

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

Anything you buy will be in the sale next week.
– Erma Bombeck

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.
– Erma Bombeck

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.
– Erma Bombeck

Housework can kill you if done right.
– Erma Bombeck

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

I’m too old for a paper round, too young for social security and too tired for an affair.
– Erma Bombeck

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

In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.
– Erma Bombeck

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.
– Erma Bombeck

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
– Erma Bombeck

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

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.
– Erma Bombeck

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the
groceries are unloaded from the car.
– Erma Bombeck

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.
– Erma Bombeck

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.
– Erma Bombeck