CALVIN TRILLIN

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.

I'm more disturbed when people expect me to be serious.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.

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

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.

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

I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can't get rid of.

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?

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

What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.

Health food makes me sick.

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.

There's always a source for humor.

You know, I used to say, when people say, 'How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?' And I say, 'Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.'

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

Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry.

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

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

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