There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast. — Erma Bombeck

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely. — Erma Bombeck

When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home. — Erma Bombeck

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

Our teen–agers withdrew to their bedrooms on their thirteenth birthday and didn’t show themselves to us again until it was time to get married. — Erma Bombeck

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time. — Erma Bombeck

No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love. — Erma Bombeck

Before we sent kids to computer camps and told them they were having a good time, there was imagination among the human species. — Erma Bombeck

Pregnancy is the only time in a woman’s life she can help God work a miracle. — Erma Bombeck

Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged. — Erma Bombeck

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ‘Checkout Time is 18 years.’ — Erma Bombeck

We even switched to a newly–formed church across the town that gave one hundred and twenty trading stamps each time we attended. (We now worship a brown and white chicken with a sunburst on its chest.) — 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

The term ‘working mother’ is redundant. — Erma Bombeck

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

I am not a glutton–I am an explorer of food. — Erma Bombeck

If compliments were food, I’d have starved to death 28 years ago. — Erma Bombeck

I’m so bored. I went to the food locker yesterday to visit my meat. — Erma Bombeck

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

I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian. — Erma Bombeck

Mother’s words of wisdom: Answer me! Don’t talk with food in your mouth! — Erma Bombeck

I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses. — Erma Bombeck

Never order food in excess of your body weight. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children. — Erma Bombeck

Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket. — Erma Bombeck

I’m going to stop punishing my children by saying, ‘Never mind! I’ll do it myself. — Erma Bombeck

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. — Erma Bombeck

It goes wIthout saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows. — Erma Bombeck

We wondered why when a child laughed, he belonged to Daddy, and when he had a sagging diaper that smelled like a landfill, ‘He wants his mother.’ — Erma Bombeck

Parenting is a negative thing. Keep your children from killing themselves, or anyone else, and hope for the best. — Erma Bombeck

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn’t turn it on. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. — Erma Bombeck

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television. — Erma Bombeck

Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it’s still snowing. — Erma Bombeck

When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten. — Erma Bombeck

When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys. — Erma Bombeck

Maybe you know why a child can reject a hot dog with mustard served on a soft bun at home, yet eat six of them two hours later at fifty cents each. — Erma Bombeck

Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born. — Erma Bombeck

It’s simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting. — Erma Bombeck

There was a time when the respect and trust my children had for me would have made you sick to your stomach. They believed I could blow on a red traffic light and turn it green. — Erma Bombeck

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

To my way of thinking, the American family started to decline when parents began to communicate with their children. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

A child develops individuAlity long before he develops tAste. i hAve seen my kid strAggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits thAt need only one Accessory An empty gin bottle. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

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

Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden. — Erma Bombeck

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart. — Erma Bombeck

Never be in a hurry to terminate a marriage. Remember, you may need this man/woman to finish a sentence. — Erma Bombeck

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown. — Erma Bombeck

I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent. — Erma Bombeck

I’ve exercised with women so thin, buzzards followed them to their cars. — Erma Bombeck

I don’t think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer. — Erma Bombeck

What does it profit a 78–year–old woman to sit around the pool in a bikini if she cannot feed herself? — Erma Bombeck

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

I have a friend who lives by a three–word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet. — Erma Bombeck

I was leafing through a magazine where there was a before–and–after picture of a woman who went from a size 5 to a size 3 by liposuction. Was she serious? I’ve cooked bigger turkeys than her ‘before’ picture. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

I’ve always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty–five: stand in natural light and have a baby. — Erma Bombeck

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

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

Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well–dressed thermometer. — 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

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

There would have been more ‘I love you’s’ and more, ‘I’m sorry’s’. — Erma Bombeck

Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain. — Erma Bombeck

Kids need love the most when they’re acting most unlovable. — Erma Bombeck

Family life got better and we got our car back–as soon as we put ‘I love Mom’ on the license plate. — Erma Bombeck

I firmly believe kids don’t want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you’re in big trouble. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

Know the difference between success and fame. Success is Mother Teresa. Fame is Madonna. — Erma Bombeck

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother. — Erma Bombeck

You show me a boy who brings a snake home to his mother and I’ll show you an orphan. — Erma Bombeck

Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy’s little boy becomes Mommy’s little boy, the kid is so wet he’s treading water. — Erma Bombeck

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it. — Erma Bombeck

No self–respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding. — Erma Bombeck

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. — Erma Bombeck

My mother phones daily to ask, ‘Did you just try to reach me?’ When I reply no, she adds, ‘So, if you’re not too busy, call me while I’m still alive,’ . . . and hangs up. — Erma Bombeck

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