Erma Bombeck

"Car designers are just going to have to come up with an automobile that outlasts the payments."

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

"Never have more children than you have car windows."

"It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows."

"Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery."

"All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them."

"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."

"Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids."

"Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other."

"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely."

"Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it."

"I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage."

"I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it."

"I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex."

"I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes."

"If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead."

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

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."

"Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial."

"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."

"Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time."

"Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy."

"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."

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child."

"What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?"

"When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."

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