Quote

Did you know that five out of three people have trouble with fractions.

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
Trouble
Five
Three
People
Fractions

More quotes by 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
A new regulation for the publishing industry: The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.
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
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
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
What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.
Calvin Trillin
Image
I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
Calvin Trillin
Image
Avoid restaurants with names that are improbable descriptions, such as the Purple Goose, the Blue Kangaroo or the Quilted Orangutan.
Calvin Trillin
Image
Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly.
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
Image
Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist.
Calvin Trillin