Quote

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!

Calvin Trillin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Finals
Helicopters
Push
Compound
Fronts
Compounds
Front
Grounds
Sitting
Shouting
Snatching
Television
Chef
Saigon
American
Panic
Embassy
People
Final
Chefs

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

Image
I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
Calvin Trillin
Image
It was a given in our family that my father was a grocer so that I wouldn't have to be.
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
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
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
Image
Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.
Calvin Trillin
Image
If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
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
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.
Calvin Trillin
Image
I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
Calvin Trillin
Image
When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly.
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
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
If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.
Calvin Trillin
Image
At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
Calvin Trillin