Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Calvin Trillin
Age: 88
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Food
Engagement
Always
Saying
Invited
Wise
Visit
Diner
Possible
Elsewhere
Replies
Known
Preparation
Diners
Less
Kitchen
Politely
Chinese
Operated
Comes
Policy
Pressing
Better

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

Image
There is a theory that sooner or later anything in America that is any fun at all will be ruined by people from California.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.
Calvin Trillin
Image
A new regulation for the publishing industry: The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
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?
Calvin Trillin
Image
Why in the world are you a Republican?
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.
Calvin Trillin
Image
I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Everybody is who he was in high school.
Calvin Trillin
Image
If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
Calvin Trillin
Image
Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
Calvin Trillin
Image
When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
I've decided to skip 'holistic'. I don't know what it means, and I don't want to know. That may seem extreme, but I followed the same strategy toward 'Gestalt' and the 'Twist', and lived to tell the tale.
Calvin Trillin