Erma Bombeck
A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend - and he's a priest.
I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'
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.
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.
House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.
Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.
In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
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?
My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
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.
In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television.
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.
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.
A grandmother pretends she doesn't know who you are on Halloween.
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.
Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.
I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip.
God created man, but I could do better.
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
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.
How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.
Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.
For some of us, watching a miniseries that lasts longer than most marriages is not easy.
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.Collection: 4th Of July
Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.Collection: Funny
Given another shot at life, I would seize every minute...look at it and really see it... live it...and never give it back. Stop sweating the small stuff. Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what. Instead, let's cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.Collection: Life
My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.Collection: Ideas
I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Hilarious
Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.Collection: Forgiveness
When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.Collection: Funny
If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.Collection: Rose
The grass is always greener over the septic tank.Collection: Tanks
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.Collection: Motivation
Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.Collection: Funny Friendship
The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Dream
Some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love - why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.Collection: Real
Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.Collection: Mother
It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.Collection: Inspirational
Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket.Collection: Children
Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.Collection: Pain
It is my theory you can't get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.Collection: Funny
Let me put it this way. According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood.Collection: Feet
Pregnancy is the only time in a woman's life she can help God work a miracle.Collection: Pregnancy