Erma Bombeck Quotes

“[On her father's death:] I didn't know his leaving would hurt so much.”

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

“Housework can kill you if done right.”

“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?”

“Babies on television never spit up on the Ultrasuede.”

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

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

“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.”

“Every puppy should have a boy.”

“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in.”

“No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love.”

“Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. "Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?" Don't you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?" Wasn't there any change?”

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

“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.”

“Children make your life important.”

“Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.”

“I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a 'strong' chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn't emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.”

“Phone are wonderful instruments, but I wouldn't want our daughter to marry one.”

“The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean.”

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

“Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.”

“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”

“It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have...One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head...and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.”

“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.”

“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.”