Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Part
Milk
Conducted
Book
Usual
Shelf
Life
Somewhere
Atrocities
Average
Controls
Trade
Shelves
Research
Publishers
Atrocity
Study
Authors
Anthology
Stories
Showed
Employing

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

Image
I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.
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
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
Being on a book tour is a lot easier than reporting.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Everybody is who he was in high school.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
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
Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in teh world is in his home town is a sissy.
Calvin Trillin
Image
If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come 'Lincolnesque' just means tall?
Calvin Trillin
Image
Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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.
Calvin Trillin
Image
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!
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
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
If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
Calvin Trillin
Image
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
Image
Following the Rumanian tradition, garlic is used in excess to keep the vampires away... Following the Jewish tradition, a dispenser of schmaltz (liquid chicken fat) is kept on the table to give the vampires heartburn if they get through the garlic defense.
Calvin Trillin