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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
Must
Publishing
Writing
Advance
Check
Lunch
Larger
Checks
Industry
Discussed
Book
Regulation

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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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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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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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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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At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
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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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Why in the world are you a Republican?
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There's always a source for humor.
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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.
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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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I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas.
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I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
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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.
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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.
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The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
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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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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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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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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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