Anybody caught selling macrame in public should be dyed a natural color and hung out to dry.

—Calvin Trillin

About Calvin Trillin

Portrait of Calvin Trillin

Calvin Marshall Trillin (born December 5, 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008).

More quotations from Calvin Trillin

In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while the article is still on the presses.

—Calvin Trillin

Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.

—Calvin Trillin

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.

—Calvin Trillin

Fat people, it is commonly held, should be punished because they offend our aesthetic sensibilities. They take up too much space on subways, buses, airplanes, and elevators. They consume more than they contribute to society. They become ill and need to be taken care of, or they die early and their families are left unsupported. The only way fat people can gain some acceptance and forgiveness for their crime of overeating is to at least try, or look like they are trying, to lose weight. They must never eat an ice cream cone in public, never be seen eating a normal sized portion of non-diet food!

—Calvin Trillin

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

—Calvin Trillin

More quotations tagged with “art”

In art the best is good enough.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I cry out for order and find it only in art.

Every artist was first an amateur.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

learning art amateurism

Humans—despite their artistic pretensions, their sophistication, and their many accomplishments—owe their existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

existence accomplishment accomplishment art weather farming

Stop thinking this is all there is.… Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral.… Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel.… Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume; right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious… there's your opening. Remember magic. And, finally, believe you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable.

—Mark Morford

war humanity beauty religion change world art temptation generosity magic resistance environment fatalism

History

5 Dec 2014 Added