Explore Quotes by 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.

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

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.

Health food makes me sick.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

Anybody caught selling macrame in public should be dyed a natural color and hung out to dry.

Was the Buffalo chicken wing invented_x000D_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_x000D_and thought of elevating wings into a specialty?

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

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

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 . . . .

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'?

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?

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.

Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.

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 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.