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Quotes by Calvin Trillin

As far as I'm concerned, whom is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
Following the Rumanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away.
– Calvin Trillin
I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.
– Calvin Trillin
I never eat in a restaurant that's over a hundred feet off the ground and won't stand still.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist.
– Calvin Trillin
Ross begat Shawn. He handed down the crown of St Peter to Shawn.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
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?
– Calvin Trillin
The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt.
– Calvin Trillin
There is no question that Rumanian-Jewish food is heavy. One meal is equal in heaviness, I would guess, to eight or nine years of steady mung-bean eating.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
With humor, it's so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
There's always a source for humor.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– 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.
– Calvin Trillin
If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.
– Calvin Trillin
I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book.
– Calvin Trillin
I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
– Calvin Trillin
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.
– Calvin Trillin
Health food makes me sick.
– Calvin Trillin
Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.
– Calvin Trillin