Calvin Trillin

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.

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.

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.

Canadians are very well behaved, they don't throw their food.

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

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

There's always a source for humor.

If law school is so hard to get through how come there are so many lawyers?

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.

...the existential paradox we all experience; we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die.

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....

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.

Daddy, how come in Kansas City the bagels taste like just round bread?

Health food makes me sick.

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