Erma Bombeck Quotes (119 Quotes)

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

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

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

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.

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

Next to 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.

Great dreams... 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.

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

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.

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.

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

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

I've never vied for power in the family before. Pointing a box at the garage door and saying Open was never a big deal, but holding that television tuner and realizing I alone control what is flashed on the screen brings out the Iacocca in me.

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.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

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

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, No, thank you, to dessert that night. And for what

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.

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.

Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It's unbridled, it's unplanned, it's full of surprises.

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.

The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a other 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.

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

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

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

I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.

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

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.

If compliments were food, I'd have starved to death 28 years ago.

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

We've got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

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

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

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.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

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.

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

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

I was going to have inner peace if I had to break a few heads to do it.

I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, Never mind I'll do it myself.

Never order food in excess of your body weight.

Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.

The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, Could I get you your check and we answered, How about the menu first

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

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

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.

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

Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory -- an empty bottle of gin.