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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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Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Teacher
Persuade
Answers
Hadn
School
Literally
Seems
Mathematical
Wells
Math
Well
Meant
Never
Teaching
Seem

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

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Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist.
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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.
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Since nostaglia is fueled by inflation, could it be that inflation is the result of a conspiracy by the people who are trying to palm off McGovern buttons and Howdy Doody puppets and their Aunt Thelma's toaster as antiques.
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The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
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When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, Get the chefs! Get the chefs!
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The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.
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If General Haig is so smart, why did he finish 214th (out of 310) in his graduating class at West Point? Does that mean there are 213 generals his age who are smarter than he is?
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Why in the world are you a Republican?
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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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When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
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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.
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Everything was blamed on Castro. Mudslides in California. The fact that you can't buy a decent tomato anymore. Was there an exceptionally high pollen count in Massapequa, Long Island, one day? It was Castro, exporting sneezes.
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If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.
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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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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
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Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly.
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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?
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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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There is a theory that sooner or later anything in America that is any fun at all will be ruined by people from California.
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In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses.
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