Calvin Trillin Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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.

Everybody is who he was in high school.

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.

Why in the world are you a Republican?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Health food makes me sick.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.

Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly.

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

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