Calvin Trillin's Quotes

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

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

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?

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.

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.'

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 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.

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

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

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

People, not just reporters, are more interested in politics than in government, so the actual issues wouldn't be something that interested them.

There's always a source for humor.

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

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

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

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.

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

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

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