Calvin Trillin quotes

When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, Get the chefs! Get the chefs!
-- Calvin Trillin

#People #Finals #Sitting

Many Texas barbecue fanatics have a strong belief in the beneficial properties of accumulated grease.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Strong #Texas #Grease

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Funny #Mom #Mother

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Sound #Butlers #Concerned

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Teacher #Teaching #School

Every good idea sooner or later degenerates into hard work.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Hard Work #Ideas #Degenerates

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Tattoo #Cry

Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Blue #Names #Purple

I'm in favor of liberalizing immigration because of the effect it would have on restaurants. I'd let just about everybody in except the English.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Immigration #Favors #Restaurants

I never eat in a restaurant that's over a hundred feet off the ground and won't stand still.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Food #Feet #Metamorphosis

Health food makes me sick.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Life #Inspiration #Sick

Sometimes, if I had until the next day to turn the story in, I'd head home, finding that the knot in the narrative came loose with the rhythmic clacking of the subway train.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Home #Next #Subway

How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Travel #Home #Islands

Was the Buffalo chicken wing invented when Teressa Bellissimo thought of splitting it in half and deep frying it and serving it with celery and blue-cheese dressing? Was it invented when John Young started using mambo sauce and thought of elevating wings into a specialty?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Blue #Wings #Half

The way I read Billy Carter's testimony, he was a model citizen himself until the voters went and ruined his life by making his brother President.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Brother #President #Citizens

One advantage of a monarchy is that a monarchy does not suffer the effects of having great clots of white Christians moping around simply because they aren't the king or queen.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Christian #Kings #Queens

I suppose it's possible that the Sundance Kid didn't like to make much of his birthdays — they may have struck him as just another reminder that his draw was getting slower by the year—but what if he truly liked a major celebration? What if he looked forward every year to marking the day of his birth with what they used to call in the West 'a real wingding, with pink balloons and a few survivors'?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Real #Kids #Years

The average trade book has a shelf life of between milk and yogurt, except for books by any member of the Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Life #Book #Average

Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes . . . .
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Phones #Chinese

Taking pleasure in the dark side may be some sort of occupational hazard for reporters.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Dark #Hazards #May

The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Ceilings #Taxation #Way

At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Quality #Social #Bride And Groom

In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Writing #America #Events

Given the clientele, the restaurants on Capri might resemble those fancy Northern Italian places on the East Side of Manhattan where the captain has taken bilingual sneering lessons from the maitre d' at the French joint down the street and the waiter, whose father was born in Palermo, would deny under torture that tomato sauce has ever touched his lips.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Father #Taken #Italian

If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
-- Calvin Trillin

#School #Law #Lawyer

Following the Romanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Vampire #Excess #Garlic

When it comes to rapacious 19th century capitalism, my family's hands are clean.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Hands #My Family #Century

We all know funny people who can't get it down on the page - even funny writers who can't get it down on the page.
-- Calvin Trillin

#People #Pages #Funny People

I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Thinking #Three

I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Thinking #Pieces

I don't mind being interviewed on television or radio.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Mind #Television #Radio

I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Restaurants #Cooks

I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
-- Calvin Trillin

#School #Jockeys #Remember

There's always a source for humor.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Source

A new regulation for the publishing industry: "The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Writing #Lunch

Do my ears deceive me, or can I actually hear the sounds of worms turning? You say a turning worm makes no sound? But how about a chorus of turning worms?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Sound #Ears #Deceiving

When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Knowing #People #Age

Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Girl #Mother #Teeth

By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Thinking #Two #Dimes

Why in the world are you a Republican?
-- Calvin Trillin

#World #Republican

The price of purity is purists.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Purity

You know, I used to say, when people say, 'How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?' And I say, 'Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.'
-- Calvin Trillin

#Monday #Writing #Sunday

The question about those aromatic advertisements that perfume companies are having stitched into magazines these days is this: under the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, is smelling up the place a constitutionally protected form of expression?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Expression #Magazines #Firsts

When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Wise #Kitchen #Preparation

When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Writing #Delivery

What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Weed #Long #People

The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Average #Yogurt

If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Writing #Inappropriate

I've always thought that parallel parking was my main talent.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Talent #Parking

Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Wells

Being on a book tour is a lot easier than reporting.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Book #Easier

What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Writing #Might #Interest

People, not just reporters, are more interested in politics than in government, so the actual issues wouldn't be something that interested them.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Government #Issues #People

I'm more disturbed when people expect me to be serious.
-- Calvin Trillin

#People #Serious #Disturbed

Marriage is part of a sort of 50′s revival package that's back in vogue along with neckties and naked ambition.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Drinking #Ambition #Naked

I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can't get rid of.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Thinking #Mind #World

Following the Rumanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away... Following the Jewish tradition, a dispenser of schmaltz (liquid chicken fat) is kept on the table to give the vampires heartburn if they get through the garlic defense.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Giving #Vampire #Defense

Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Family

The food in such places is so tasteless because the members associate spices and garlic with just the sort of people they're trying to keep out.
-- Calvin Trillin

#People #Trying #Spices

It happens to be a matter of record that I was first in print with the discovery that the tastelessness of the food offered in American clubs varies in direct proportion to the exclusiveness of the club.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Discovery #Cooking #Records

Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in teh world is in his home town is a sissy.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Home #Thinking #World

"Law professors were never like economics professors," a Harvard Law professor told me. "If you disagreed with someone, you didn't call him a fool."
-- Calvin Trillin

#Law #Fool #Economics

The margin of error in astrology is plus or minus one hundred percent.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Funny #Astrology #Errors

Anybody caught selling macrame in public should be dyed a natural color and hung out to dry.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Color #Dry #Selling

Perhaps we've time to have a look at the Number Thirty-One bus queue before we turn in.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Numbers #Looks #Thirty

I don't care where I sit, as long as I get fed.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Long #Care #Feds

With humor, it’s so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Crazy #Thinking #Trying

The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Colonialism #Sandwiches #Argument

Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College: Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students, and parking for the faculty. If law school is so hard to get through, how come there are so many lawyers?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Football #Sex #School

I suppose that there are endeavors in which self-confidence is even more important than it is in writing -- tightrope walking comes immediately to mind -- but it's difficult for me to think of anybody producing much writing if his confidence is completely shot.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Writing #Self Confidence #Thinking

Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Firsts #Burden #Restaurants

I've decided to skip 'holistic'. I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward 'Gestalt' and the 'Twist', and lived to tell the tale.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Mean #Twists #Gestalt

Since nostaglia is fueled by inflation, could it be that inflation is the result of a conspiracy by the people who are trying to palm off McGovern buttons and Howdy Doody puppets and their Aunt Thelma's toaster as antiques.
-- Calvin Trillin

#Aunt #People #Trying

If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you, why can't any of those guys (in the health stores) grow full beards?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Guy #Leaving #Bumblebees

If General Haig is so smart, why did he finish 214th (out of 310) in his graduating class at West Point? Does that mean there are 213 generals his age who are smarter than he is?
-- Calvin Trillin

#Military #Smart #Mean