Calvin Trillin Quotes

Many Texas barbecue fanatics have a strong belief in the beneficial properties of accumulated 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

Did you know that five out of three people have trouble with fractions.

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

I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

There is a theory that sooner or later anything in America that is any fun at all will be ruined by people from California.

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

Health food makes me sick.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.

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

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

Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.

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?