Erma Bombeck
96 quotes
Biography
"When humor goes, there goes civilization."
"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
"When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?"it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."
"Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy."
"A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween."
"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."
"If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?"
"I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday."
"Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments."
"Never have more children than you have car windows."
"Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery."
"My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car."
"Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time."
"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."
"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."
"A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat."
"I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage."
"Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial."
"I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage."
"Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial."