Erma Bombeck

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

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.

When humor go's, there go's civilization.

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.

When you leave them in the morning, they stick their nose in the door crack and stand there like a portrait until you turn the key eight hours later.

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.

In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It's literary suicide.

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

I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food

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.

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.

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.

Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.

Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn't teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.

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

The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

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.

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.

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.