Quote

[Nikola Tesla and Leon Theremin] were European gentlemen, very well-mannered, all of the stuff you associate with living in Europe.

Paul Laffoley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Laffoley
Age: 80 †
Born: 1935
Born: August 14
Died: 2015
Died: November 16
Architect
Artist
Diarist
Inventor
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Paul George
Jr. Laffoley
European
Gentleman
Europe
Mannered
Living
Leon
Stuff
Tesla
Wells
Associate
Well
Gentlemen
Associates

More quotes by Paul Laffoley

Image
I was born rather late in [my father's] life, in his mid - 40s. And so what he did up until the time he was 15, I think probably from age 12 to 15, my grandfather made him demonstrate mediumistic powers at the Exeter Street Theater, the first Spiritualist church in the United States.
Paul Laffoley
Image
Any sort of working drawings are simply diagrams. Architecture encourages your imagination to work that way.
Paul Laffoley
Image
You know, in the suburbs, most people believe in gravity, but they don't have much of a sense of humor.
Paul Laffoley
Image
My father said he did have the mathematics of mind physics, or the physics of consciousness.
Paul Laffoley
Image
In other words, you've got a journey as the plot, but it has to be in a lively environment, being able to create the mood. If you read Pickman's Model, in other words, they're winding their way through the Boston Streets and [H.P.] Lovecraft researched what was there.
Paul Laffoley
Image
The tetrahedron was [ Buckminster Fuller's] big thing. He'd talk about it in the same way Plato talked about angles.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I like Colin Wilson, mainly because he never went to school. When you don't go to school you can say anything you want like that and not have to worry.
Paul Laffoley
Image
[My father] was also a lawyer in his bank and specialized in tax law. He would have to do the tax returns for all the Harvard profs because they were buffaloed by that kind of reasoning. Professors in the economics department, even they knew nothing about it.
Paul Laffoley
Image
It was on Long John's show that I heard Orfeo Angelucci being interviewed. In other words, the whole thing about the green globes on the top of a car bumper and the voice coming out, you know, and then this beautiful lady.... So he went through the whole number, what you read in his book, that kind of stuff. A whole raft of things.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I always had a sense of liking diagrams, from the time I was studying architecture. Architecture is built diagrams, basically.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I'd had the experience with Giuseppe Conti, I said, My God, that's my movie! I kept seeing [The Day the Earth Stood Still] everywhere I could. Then finally, when VHS and DVDs came out, I got that. And I keep watching it all the time.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I think [Nikola Tesla] was always like that. And so it was inevitable that he would be an inventor. Because it was so easy for him to think fourth-dimensionally, dynamically. It wasn't just a static thing with him. In other words, it isn't the way an architect thinks, which is essentially static.
Paul Laffoley
Image
[Buckminster Fuller] always liked to say that he got kicked out of Harvard three times. Mostly you only got kicked out once, but he kept coming back.
Paul Laffoley
Image
Both [Nikola] Tesla and [Leon] Theremin were preternaturally young. I mean, for a long time Tesla was a young man well into his 70s. And so was Theremin, even though, at the end, he looked pretty old. But he was still doing things that young guys do, beyond the time you'd normally think people should be doing that stuff.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I would be constantly brought up on the carpet by these teachers who were brought up with Abstract Expressionism, saying, You're too uptight, you're not expressing yourself, why don't you feel freer? I said, Well, I don't like that stuff. It means nothing to me.
Paul Laffoley
Image
[My father] had this quirky thing of not believing in gravity. And giving me a constant headache about that one. He would say if I showed any interest in gravity, I was becoming a dupe of the system. He could see indications I was beginning to believe in it.
Paul Laffoley
Image
Stephen Hawking won [Babson Institute competition ] one year with his black hole stuff. It's keeping an open mind on whether gravity exists or not. I think my father believed this because ... when the wind blew on him, he'd get angry, because it was something he couldn't control.
Paul Laffoley
Image
[My father] was always upset that my mother didn't want to live in New York. Because he said he wanted to live in a hotel and not have to mow the lawn and all that. In other words, he never liked sports clothes, he always liked to be dressed up formally, 24/7. And he drove big cars and, you know, just loved to act the banker.
Paul Laffoley
Image
[My father] was a banker. He was the president of the Cambridge Trust Company, the head of the trust department, and he taught classes at the Harvard Business School. And he was a member of the Harvard Faculty Club, which I am, too, because what I did is... I have the same name as my father, only Jr.
Paul Laffoley
Image
I would say that it's probably impossible for a lot of people to even think what H.P. Lovecraft's theological state was.
Paul Laffoley