Erma Bombeck - Forever, Erma (1996)

21 Sourced Quotes

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I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.

Erma Bombeck
Let us hope manufacturers can come up with a diaper that is environmentally sound. To go back to cloth would send us back to the day when breathing and raising a baby at the same time were incompatible.

Erma Bombeck
I think it's time we women stopped carrying supplies for the entire family. If children don't have room to carry their own toys, if men don't have pockets in their pants, tougho.

Erma Bombeck
I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash... you add a longer tail... you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.

Erma Bombeck
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.

Erma Bombeck
One of the things 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.

Erma Bombeck
He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to go into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures... but he was never in them.

Erma Bombeck
Sexually active coat hangers are at their peak when they are in a small closet. We once lived in an apartment with a closet so small it couldn't support a rod... just two nails. Within a week (the shortest gestation in the history of coat hangers) we had thirty-seven of those suckers.

Erma Bombeck
What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

Erma Bombeck
I never like to make generalities about people, but let's face it: People who love fruitcakes are 'different.'

Erma Bombeck
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.

Erma Bombeck
It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have...One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head...and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.

Erma Bombeck
I never go to a college reunion that I don't come away feeling sorry for all those paunchy, balding jocks trying to hang onto youth. I feel sorry for the men too.

Erma Bombeck
Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

Erma Bombeck
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
Explain to me how he [her son] can ride a bicycle, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim and race for eight hours... and has to be driven to the garbage can.

Erma Bombeck
Motherhood isn't just a series of contractions; it's a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being.

Erma Bombeck
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
There are few things in this world more satisfying than having your son teach you how to play tennis, unless it is having a semi-truck run over your foot.

Erma Bombeck
A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't charge more after midnight — or anything before midnight.

Erma Bombeck
I have dieted continuously for the last two decades and lost a total of 758 pounds. By all calculations, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

Erma Bombeck