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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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Calvin Trillin
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: December 5
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Kansas City
Missouri
Calvin Marshall Trillin
Grocer
Grocers
Wouldn
Family
Father
Given

More quotes by Calvin Trillin

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There's always a source for humor [in politics]. If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny. So it sort of selects itself. It has to. And plus, often something that wouldn't be funny at the time is okay to make jokes about later.
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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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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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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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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I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.
Calvin Trillin
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Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist.
Calvin Trillin
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I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
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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Did you know that five out of three people have trouble with fractions.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
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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What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.
Calvin Trillin
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Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
Calvin Trillin
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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.
Calvin Trillin
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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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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