Calvin Trillin Quotes

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

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

Being on a book tour is a lot easier than reporting.

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

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

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

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

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

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

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

- Calvin Trillin

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

- Calvin Trillin

There's always a source for humor.

- Calvin Trillin

Health food makes me sick.

- Calvin Trillin