Calvin Trillin

“I've always thought that parallel parking was my main talent.”

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

“What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place.”

“When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.”

“School plays were invented partly to give parents and easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities.”

“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?”

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

“With humor, it's so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.”

“I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book.”

“I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.”

“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.”

“I don't mind being interviewed on television or radio.”

“People, not just reporters, are more interested in politics than in government, so the actual issues wouldn't be something that interested them.”

“I've written three books you could think of as memoirs.”

“When it comes to rapacious 19th century capitalism, my family's hands are clean.”