"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 . . . ."
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Quote collection
Calvin Trillin quotes (page 5 of 5)
94 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"How did Italy manage to end up with no Caribbean islands at all? Christopher Columbus took the trouble to discover the Caribbean personally before the end of the fifteenth century. Try to get a decent plate of spaghetti there now."
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"It was a given in our family that my father was a grocer so that I wouldn't have to be."
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"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?"
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"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'?"
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"When it comes to rapacious 19th century capitalism, my family's hands are clean."
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"I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book."
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"I don't mind being interviewed on television or radio."
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"I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant."
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"With humor, it’s so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy."
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"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?"
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"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?"
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"As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt."
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"I've always thought that parallel parking was my main talent."
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