Erma Bombeck Quotes

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

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'.

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

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

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

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

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.

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

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.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

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

Cats invented self-esteem.

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

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

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

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

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

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

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?

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.

When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'

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

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

Never have more children than you have car windows.

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

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

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.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

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

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

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

I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

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

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.

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.

He who laughs.....lasts.

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.

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

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

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

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.

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

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.

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.

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

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

I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.