Calvin Trillin Quotes

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.'

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

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.

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

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

If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come 'Lincolnesque' just means tall?

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?

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

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

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.

Every good idea sooner or later degenerates into hard work.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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'?

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

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.

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

Health food makes me sick.

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.

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

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

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.

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.

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.

Why in the world are you a Republican?

The price of purity is purists.

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives.

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

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