Daily Inspiration Quote by Erma Bombeck

A humorist who starts believing their own press stops being a humorist and turns into a preacher with punchlines. Bombeck’s line lands because it treats self-importance as a kind of occupational hazard: the moment you confuse your persona for a prophet, the comedy dies on the page. “Literary suicide” is perfectly Bombeckian hyperbole, but it’s also a real craft warning. Humor depends on friction - between what we say and what we mean, between our self-image and our actual behavior. Taking yourself seriously sands down that friction until everything reads like messaging.

The intent is defensive and liberating at once. Bombeck carved a career out of domestic life at a time when “women’s pages” were routinely dismissed; her authority came precisely from refusing the swollen seriousness that gatekeepers used to police prestige. The subtext: don’t let the culture’s contempt for comedy trick you into overcorrecting. Respect the work, yes. Worship the self, no.

Context matters because Bombeck wrote in a late-20th-century media ecosystem that rewarded a recognizable voice - warm, self-deprecating, sharply observant - while also tempting successful columnists to pivot into punditry. Her warning reads like a preemptive strike against that drift. It’s not anti-ambition; it’s anti-solemnity. For humorists, the ego is the biggest heckler in the room, and once it takes the mic, the audience quietly leaves.