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1 " 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
2 " Someone who managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in. "
― Calvin Trillin , About Alice
3 " School plays were invented partly to give parents and easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities. "
4 " Health food makes me sick. "
5 " Daddy, how come in Kansas City the bagels taste like just round bread? "
― Calvin Trillin , Feeding a Yen: Savoring Local Specialties, from Kansas City to Cuzco
6 " Because a superior fried-chicken restaurant is often the institutional extension of a single chicken-obsessed woman, I realize that, like a good secondhand bookstore or a bad South American dictatorship, it is not easily passed down intact. "
7 " In the rather informal survey I have taken over the years on intensity of interest in food by profession, lawyers rank only a few trades below concert pianists.... "
― Calvin Trillin , The Tummy Trilogy: American Fried; Alice, Let's Eat; Third Helpings
8 " ...the existential paradox we all experience; we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die. "
9 " As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. "
10 " Why in the world are you a Republican? "
11 " Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes . . . . "
12 " By the way, did you fellows know that a hummingbird weighs as much as a quarter? Do you think a hummingbird also weighs the same as two dimes and a nickel? But then she asked a question of her own: How do they weigh a hummingbird? "
― Calvin Trillin ,
13 " among married couples the person who actually makes out the mortgage check is likely to be more cautious about spending money than the person who doesn't. There is something sobering about sending away that much money every month in the knowledge that, rain or shine, you'll have to come up with the same amount of money the next month and the month after that. "
14 " The price of purity is purists. "
15 " I suppose it's possible that the Sundance Kid didn't like to make much of his birthdays — they may have struck him as just another reminder that his draw was getting slower by the year—but what if he truly liked a major celebration? What if he looked forward every year to marking the day of his birth with what they used to call in the West 'a real wingding, with pink balloons and a few survivors'? "
― Calvin Trillin , Travels with Alice
16 " Would I be commenting on Amy Fisher?Was that the sort of subject that someone who hoped to become poet laureate should discuss? Would those British laureates who had traditionally written about royal birthdays and royal jubilees have dealt with such goings on? "
― Calvin Trillin , Deadline Poet: Or, My Life as a Doggerelist
17 " Going out? Are you going out? He's not going out? What do you mean he's not going out? Are you out here because you're still mad that they moved the Dodgers to L.A.? Are you going out or not? You're not going out? I guess you're not going out — huh? You mean go out parking in the evenings? Are you going out to park? Mr. Tepper, he asked at one point, did you ever — if you were in the middle of an interesting story in the paper or perhaps an interesting conversation with somebody who dropped in to talk to you while you were parking — notice that the meter had run out and therefore go out and put more money in the meter? If we're both keeping an eye out, what does it hurt? "
― Calvin Trillin , Tepper Isn't Going Out
18 " Was the Buffalo chicken wing inventedwhen Teressa Bellissimo thought of splitting it in half and deep frying it and serving it with celery and blue-cheese dressing? Was it invented when John Young started using mambo sauceand thought of elevating wings into a specialty? "
― Calvin Trillin , Third Helpings
19 " Do my ears deceive me, or can I actually hear the sounds of worms turning? You say a turning worm makes no sound? But how about a chorus of turning worms? "
― Calvin Trillin , Too Soon To Tell
20 " Reporters also tend to love trials. It may be that we are transfixed by a process in which the person being asked a question actually has to answer it. He cannot say he would rather not comment. He cannot tell an anecdote on a different subject. He has to answer the question—under oath that he is telling the truth. "
― Calvin Trillin , Killings
