Calvin Trillin

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Life is like improvised jazz. We cannot regulate all the variables. We must play it with panache and flair as best we can.

Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

You know I don’t wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn’t make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious…

Awareness without action is worthless.

In the 80s, when I was a little girl, this whole Midtown area was a different world. These are the streets that I walked, and learned my lessons on, and heard the music, and witnessed disenfranchised people, and people who just had dreams and hopes. Every pimp, every prostitute, every drug dealer, every Broadway dreamer wishing they could be a writer, or a musician, or an actor.

I am what I am Are you what you are or What?

It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.

Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and every thing that happins to me from now on..

Courage is grace under pressure.

Life experiences, mental illness, drugs, greed, environment, and poor role-modeling can all forge damaged people and can generate a darkness, an exploitiveness, in the way they approach life. Whatever their genesis, there are people in your life (and mine) who will hurt you if you let them.