Quotes by Calvin Trillin - Page 2

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 / Journalist
Bumblebees
Guy
Leaving
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Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Blue
Names
Purple
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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 / Journalist
Ceilings
Taxation
Way
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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 / Journalist
Book
Lunch
Writing
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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 / Journalist
Government
Issues
People
Reporters
Politics Government People
Actual
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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 / Journalist
Garlic
Members
People
Spices
Trying
Associate
Places
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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 / Journalist
Favors
Immigration
Restaurants
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It has long been acknowledged that the single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant's Barbecue at Eighteenth and Booklyn in Kansas city.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Cities
Kansas City
Long
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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 / Journalist
Being Funny
Disability
Mind
Odd
Thinking
World
Weird
Mild
Rid
Weird Way
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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 / Journalist
Brother
Citizens
President
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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 / Journalist
Book
Chinese
Phones
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"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 / Journalist
Economics
Fool
Law
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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 / Journalist
Funny
Family
Parenting
Mom
Found
Leftovers
Mother
Mothers Day
Remarkable
Thirty
Years
Original
Meal
Served
She
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There is no question that Rumanian-Jewish food is heavy. One meal is equal in heaviness, I would guess, to eight or nine years of steady mung-bean eating.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Eight
Meals
Years
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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 / Journalist
Family
Life
Book
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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 / Journalist
Deceiving
Ears
Sound
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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 / Journalist
Home
Next Day
Stories
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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 / Journalist
Kings
Queens
Christian
White
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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 / Journalist
Mean
Military
Smart
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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 / Journalist
Girl
Dinner Guests
Justice
Mother
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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 / Journalist
Age
Knowing
People
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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 / Journalist
Cooking
Discovery
Records
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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 / Journalist
Gestalt
Mean
Twists
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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 / Journalist
Football
School
Sex
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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 / Journalist
America
Events
Writing
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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 / Journalist
Aunt
People
Trying
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Everything was blamed on Castro. Mudslides in California. The fact that you can't buy a decent tomato anymore. Was there an exceptionally high pollen count in Massapequa, Long Island, one day? It was Castro, exporting sneezes.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
California
Islands
Long
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Although I grew up in Kansas City, ... I have always kept more or less au courant of Texas barbecue, like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L. standings now and then.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Sports
Basketball
Texas
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As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Average
Book
Milk
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Fairs are good places to eat, particularly for stand-up eaters--which is one of the kinds of eaters I am, although when I eat standing up away from home I sometimes miss the familiar cool breeze coming from the open refrigerator.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Home
Kind
Missing
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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 / Journalist
Dimes
Thinking
Two
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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 / Journalist
Finals
People
Sitting
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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 / Journalist
Home
Travel
Islands
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The interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Class
Interesting
People
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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 / Journalist
Expression
First Amendment
Firsts
Magazines
Perfume
Protected
Advertisement
Amendment
Companies
Freedoms
Guaranteed
Smelling
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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 / Journalist
Monday
Sunday
Writing
People Way Know
Nights
People Say
Shower
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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 / Journalist
Giving
Jewish Tradition
Vampire
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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 / Journalist
Wise
Chinese
Chinese Food
Elsewhere
Engagement
Invited
Kitchen
Policy
Preparation
Less
Possible
Diner
Operated
Politely
Pressing
Saying
Visit
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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 / Journalist
Self Confidence
Thinking
Writing
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Before I was born [my father] wanted me to go specifically to Yale, which he thought would help. It was easy for him to think I could be president: he didn't have to worry about being president himself, being ineligible because he wasn't born in the United States.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Father
Thinking
Yale
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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 / Journalist
Blue
Half
Wings
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There's always a source for humor [in politics]. If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny. So it sort of selects itself. It has to. And plus, often something that wouldn't be funny at the time is okay to make jokes about later.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Inappropriate
Source
Writing
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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 / Journalist
Food
Father
Taken
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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 / Journalist
Kids
Real
Years
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The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health--congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.
Calvin Trillin / Journalist
Ambition
Baseball
Stars
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Calvin Trillin Quotes - Page 2

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