Erma Bombeck's Quotes

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.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Never order food in excess of your body weight.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.

God created man, but I could do better.

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

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

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

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.

For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.

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

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

On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.

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 have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

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'.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

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

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids.

Never have more children than you have car windows.

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?

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

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.

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

Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.

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

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

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

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.

Children make your life important.

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

I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.