Top 250 Erma Bombeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.”

— Erma Bombeck

102. “Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain.”

— Erma Bombeck

103. “One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

105. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

106. “What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?”

— Erma Bombeck

107. “My son would walk to the refrigerator-freezer and fling both doors open and stand there until the hairs in his nose iced up. After surveying $200 worth of food in varying shapes and forms, he would declare loudly, ‘There’s nothing to eat!’”

— Erma Bombeck

108. “I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.”

— Erma Bombeck

109. “My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.”

— Erma Bombeck

110. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

111. “The woman who says, ‘My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us’ is a psychopathic liar.”

— Erma Bombeck

112. “Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.”

— Erma Bombeck

113. “Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.”

— Erma Bombeck

114. “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?””

— Erma Bombeck

115. “Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, ‘No thank you’ to desert that night. And for what?!”

— Erma Bombeck

116. “You become about as exciting as your food blender. The kids come in, look you in the eye, and ask if anybody’s home.”

— Erma Bombeck

117. “One meal a day is enough for a lion and would be for all of us if all we did all day was swat flies.”

— Erma Bombeck

118. “No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.”

— Erma Bombeck

119. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

121. “You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I’ll show you an orphan.”

— Erma Bombeck

122. “Having a delivery covered by Medicare just isn’t going to fly. It’s too risky for a woman to put a baby down and not remember where she left it.”

— Erma Bombeck

123. “How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?”

— Erma Bombeck

124. “A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.”

— Erma Bombeck

125. “I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.”

— Erma Bombeck

126. “I have just come up with a wonderful solution to end all wars. Let me give directions on how to get there.”

— Erma Bombeck

127. “I didn’t fear old age. I was just becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only people who said old age was beautiful were usually twenty-three years old.”

— Erma Bombeck

128. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

129. “I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.”

— Erma Bombeck

130. “People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.”

— Erma Bombeck

131. “I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.”

— Erma Bombeck

132. “My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.”

— Erma Bombeck

133. “After age twelve, birthdays should be as private as hernia surgery.”

— Erma Bombeck

134. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.”

— Erma Bombeck

135. “The fact was I didn’t want to look my age, but I didn’t want to act the age I wanted to look either. I also wanted to grow old enough to understand that sentence.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

137. “Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.”

— Erma Bombeck

138. “Spend at least one Mother’s Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him.”

— Erma Bombeck

139. “Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.”

— Erma Bombeck

140. “I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses.”

— Erma Bombeck

141. “I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.”

— Erma Bombeck

142. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

143. “Never order food in excess of your body weight.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

145. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

146. “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.”

— Erma Bombeck

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

— Erma Bombeck

148. “A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn’t charge more after midnight – or anything before midnight.”

— Erma Bombeck

149. “Crocodiles have a smile I’ve seen on the face of every lawyer I’ve ever met.”

— Erma Bombeck

150. “A small waist makes you tire easily.”

— Erma Bombeck