Daily Inspiration Quote by Erma Bombeck

Bombeck’s genius is that she dresses existential dread in a kitchen-apron punchline. The line starts with a blunt truth most marriage advice avoids: the institution doesn’t come with a warranty. Then she swerves hard into the absurd - a car battery, that emblem of dependable, repeatable output. Turn the key, get the spark. Unlike humans, it doesn’t have moods, childhood baggage, or a sudden urge to “find itself.”

The specific intent is comic deflation: puncturing the fantasy that marriage is a contract that can eliminate risk. Bombeck isn’t romanticizing uncertainty; she’s mocking the consumer mindset that treats a spouse like an appliance with predictable performance. The joke lands because it’s a perfect category error. You can live with a person or you can live with a product. Wanting the second while signing up for the first is the original marital self-own.

Subtextually, she’s offering a survival tactic: trade the demand for guarantees for a tolerance of mess. There’s an implied tenderness in the roast - if you accept that unpredictability is the price of intimacy, you stop litigating every disappointment as a breach of contract. It’s also a quiet feminist jab, rooted in Bombeck’s era, at the cultural script sold to women: marry and you’ll be secure, emotionally and economically. She answers: security isn’t a spouse’s job; it’s a myth, and myths make terrible roommates.

The battery image is deliberately unsexy. It’s a reminder that certainty is sterile. The funny part is also the warning: if your highest value is reliability, don’t confuse it with love.