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Calvin Trillin Quotes

"The shelf life of the average trade book is somewhere between milk and yogurt."

"As far as I'm concerned, "whom" is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler."

"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?"

"I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally."
Imagination

"Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist."

"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."

"Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth."

"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."

"The food in such places is so tasteless because the members associate spices and garlic with just the sort of people they're trying to keep out."

"Ross begat Shawn. He handed down the crown of St Peter to Shawn."

"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."

"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."

"I never eat in a restaurant that's over a hundred feet off the ground and won't stand still."

"There is no question that Rumanian-Jewish food is heavy. One meal is equal in heaviness, I would guess, to eight or nine years of steady mung-bean eating."

"Health food makes me sick."

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