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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

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Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Industry
Discussed
Book
Regulation
Must
Publishing
Writing
Advance
Check
Lunch
Larger
Checks

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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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One advantage of a monarchy is that a monarchy does not suffer the effects of having great clots of white Christians moping around simply because they aren't the king or queen.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
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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.
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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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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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Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in teh world is in his home town is a sissy.
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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.
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Being on a book tour is a lot easier than reporting.
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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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When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
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What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.
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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.
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Everybody is who he was in high school.
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If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you, why can't any of those guys (in the health stores) grow full beards?
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