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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.

Calvin Trillin

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Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Century
Plates
Trouble
Islands
Fifteenth
Ends
Personally
Christopher
Home
Decent
Spaghetti
Trying
Manage
Caribbean
Discover
Columbus
Travel
Plate
Took
Italy

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Did you know that five out of three people have trouble with fractions.
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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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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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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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What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
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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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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.
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If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come 'Lincolnesque' just means tall?
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I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
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Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
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If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
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The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.
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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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Taking pleasure in the dark side may be some sort of occupational hazard for reporters.
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The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
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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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Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.
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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 never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.
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