Calvin Trillin Quotes - Page 3

"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."

It was a given in our family that my father was a grocer so that I wouldn't have to be.

There's always a source for humor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.