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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

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Calvin Trillin
Age: 88
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
World
Turns
Actually
Funny
Mild
Mind
Disability
Way
Odd
Think
Weird
Thinking
Turn
Like
Looking

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

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Following the Rumanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away... 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
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I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas.
Calvin Trillin
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Being on a book tour is a lot easier than reporting.
Calvin Trillin
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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
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When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
Calvin Trillin
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I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
Calvin Trillin
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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
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I'm in favor of liberalizing immigration because of the effect it would have on restaurants. I'd let just about everybody in except the English.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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There's always a source for humor [in politics]. If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny. So it sort of selects itself. It has to. And plus, often something that wouldn't be funny at the time is okay to make jokes about later.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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Law professors were never like economics professors, a Harvard Law professor told me. If you disagreed with someone, you didn't call him a fool.
Calvin Trillin
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Taking pleasure in the dark side may be some sort of occupational hazard for reporters.
Calvin Trillin
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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
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Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.
Calvin Trillin
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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
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It has long been acknowledged that the single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant's Barbecue at Eighteenth and Booklyn in Kansas city.
Calvin Trillin
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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
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At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
Calvin Trillin
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If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
Calvin Trillin