Erma Bombeck
Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.Collection: Memorable
If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?Collection: Pits
Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.Collection: Religious
You always hear about fashion's success stories. How a starlet lost an earring one night and by the next morning, the entire country was wearing one earring. Or how sweaters made a comeback in a drugstore, or a First Lady influenced how we dressed during her reign. But what about the losers? The fashions that came and went out the same day? The hopes and dreams of designers that were shattered by the sound of fifty million women ... laughing themselves to death.Collection: Country
I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.Collection: Night
I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.Collection: Worry
Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase.Collection: Sports
It's frightening to wake up one morning and discover that while you were asleep you went out of style.Collection: Morning
I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.Collection: Mother
There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.Collection: Teach
Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having.Collection: Children
As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.Collection: Children
It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line.Collection: Dream
To say, "Well, I write when I really get into it" is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snowblindness if you have to, but write something.Collection: Writing
. . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute - look at it and really see it - live it - and never give it back.Collection: Giving
It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You're on your own, Bernice.Collection: Food
No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love.Collection: Baby
Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ball-point pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food. Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.Collection: Moving
A child needs your love most when he deserves it leastCollection: Children
Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.Collection: Mother
A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight - or anything before midnight.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Tattoo
Throughout the years I have set up my own rules about eating food: Never eat anything you can't pronounce. Beware of food that is described as, "Some Americans say it tastes like chicken.Collection: Years
When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.Collection: Money
Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best.Collection: Hope
I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.Collection: Tables
I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses.Collection: Funny
A small waist makes you tire easily.Collection: Weight
I've decided life is too fragile to finish a book I dislike just because it cost $16.95 and everyone else loved it. Or eat a fried egg with a broken yolk (which I hate) when the dog would leap over the St. Louis Arch for it.Collection: Dog
Myths that need clarification: "No matter how many times you see the Grand canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears." False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.Collection: Children
I have always felt cookbooks were fiction and the most beautiful words in the English language were 'room service.Collection: Beautiful
Never loan your car to anyone to whom you've given birth.Collection: Car
Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn't even in the same neighborhood.Collection: Toasters
I've always been intrigued with the variety of answers this generation will give their children who ask, "Where did I come from, Mommy?" They will range from "Number 176 vial in Buffalo, New York," to "You were defrosted."Collection: Funny
I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna, and rescue the cat ... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.Collection: Children
It would have been a wonderful wedding - had it not been mine.Collection: Funny
Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, 'No thank you' to desert that night. And for what?!Collection: Night
Mother's words of wisdom: Answer me! Don't talk with food in your mouth!Collection: Mother
The more I think about it, the more there is to be said for the sloth. He sleeps fifteen to eighteen hours a day and is known to have taken forty-eight days to travel four miles. He hangs in the trees after he's dead. But he lives longer than the cheetah.Collection: Funny
Enter my first neighbor - a woman who spoke in complete, coherent sentences, who ate with a knife and fork and who only cried at weddings. I couldn't help myself. In a dramatic gesture, I bolted the door and threw my body across it to prevent her exit. She understood.Collection: Doors
With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It's all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.Collection: Boys
No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.Collection: Mother
A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat. A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend -- and he's a priest.Collection: Husband
The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother 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.Collection: Mother
When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.Collection: Children
I'm going to stop punishing my children by saying, “Never mind! I'll do it myself.Collection: Children
My idea of 'roughing it' is when you have to have an extension for your electric blanket.Collection: Ideas
I have finally mastered what to do with the second tennis ball. Having small hands, I was becoming terribly self-conscious about keeping it in a can in the car while I served the first one. I noted some women tucked the second ball just inside the elastic leg of their tennis panties. I tried, but found the space already occupied by a leg. Now, I simply drop the second ball down my cleavage, giving me a chest that often stuns my opponent throughout an entire set.Collection: Small Hands
I have just come up with a wonderful solution to end all wars. Let me give directions on how to get there.Collection: War