Quote

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

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
Ends
Personally
Christopher
Home
Decent
Spaghetti
Trying
Manage
Caribbean
Discover
Columbus
Travel
Plate
Took
Italy
Century
Plates
Trouble
Islands
Fifteenth

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

Image
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
Image
I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Everybody is who he was in high school.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.
Calvin Trillin
Image
The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
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
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
Image
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.
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
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
What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
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
Taking pleasure in the dark side may be some sort of occupational hazard for reporters.
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
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?
Calvin Trillin
Image
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.
Calvin Trillin
Image
There's always a source for humor.
Calvin Trillin
Image
I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
Calvin Trillin