Erma Bombeck

“. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute - look at it and really see it - live it - and never give it back.”

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

“Every puppy should have a boy.”

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

“... it's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting.”

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

“When you leave them in the morning, they stick their nose in the door crack and stand there like a portrait until you turn the key eight hours later.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I originate from a family where sauce is viewed as a refreshment.”

“The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.”

“There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.”

“Early in my life I had made a pact with myself. I would never eat anything that moved when I cooked it, excited the dog, or inflated upon impact with my teeth.”

“I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.”

“Grandmas can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realisation that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“Cats invented self-esteem.”

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

“I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.”

“There would have been more 'I love you's' and more, 'I'm sorry's'.”

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

“Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.”

“I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before-and-after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I've cooked bigger turkeys than her "before" picture.”

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

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

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

“No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.”

“I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”

“I learned the importance of a man's chair early in life. I learned that he may love several wives, embrace several cars, be true to more than one political philosophy, and be equally committed to several careers, but he will have only one comfortable chair in his life. I learned it will be an ugly chair. It will match nothing in the entire house. It will never wear out.”

“I became hysterical and frightened and begged for sedation. And that was just the first prenatal visit.”

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

“A child develops individuality long before he develops taste.”

“In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Never order food in excess of your body weight.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“not all bears have their own television series. Some of them are unemployed wild animals.”

“It's [motherhood] the biggest on-the-job- training program in existence today.”

“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.”

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