Quotes from Calvin Trillin

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'?

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?

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?

Would I be commenting on Amy Fisher? Was that the sort of subject that someone who hoped to become poet laureate should discuss? Would those British laureates who had traditionally written about royal birthdays and royal jubilees have dealt with such goings on?

Reporters also tend to love trials. It may be that we are transfixed by a process in which the person being asked a question actually has to answer it. He cannot say he would rather not comment. He cannot tell an anecdote on a different subject. He has to answer the question—under oath that he is telling the truth.

among married couples the person who actually makes out the mortgage check is likely to be more cautious about spending money than the person who doesn't. There is something sobering about sending away that much money every month in the knowledge that, rain or shine, you'll have to come up with the same amount of money the next month and the month after that.

Someone who managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.

Was the Buffalo chicken wing invented 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 and thought of elevating wings into a specialty?

SEEING THE WORLD "In the fifties, when my mother began lobbying for a trip to Europe, my father, who had been brought to Missouri from the Ukraine when he was two, said, 'I been.' 

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

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.

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

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.

There's always a source for humor.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book.

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

Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.