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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.

Calvin Trillin

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Calvin Trillin
Age: 88
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Pages
Writers
Funny
Even
People
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More quotes by Calvin Trillin

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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.
Calvin Trillin
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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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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
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It was a given in our family that my father was a grocer so that I wouldn't have to be.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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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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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.
Calvin Trillin
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I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
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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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
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.
Calvin Trillin
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I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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Did you know that five out of three people have trouble with fractions.
Calvin Trillin
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I'm in favor of liberalizing immigration because of the effect it would have on restaurants. I'd let just about everybody in except the English.
Calvin Trillin
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What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin