“The Babson Institute, which is now an actual university, was started by this guy [my father] who also had a problem with believing in gravity. And so he started the Babson Institute in New Boston, New Hampshire, which then moved to Gloucester. Each year they have a competition of one thousand dollars for one thousand words of an essay on gravity. That's the way they do it.” WayYearsBelieveProblemGuyFatherThousandMovedDollarsCompetitionUniversityGravityEssaysThis GuyBostonInstituteHampshireNew HampshireGloucester Author:Paul Laffoley
“I met a guy who had the same theory and wrote a book about it. His name is Walter C. Wright Jr. His book is called Gravity Is a Push. I wrote to him and told him about my father, and he said he wished he'd met him. My father died quite a while ago.” SaidBookGuyFatherNamesTheoryMetsDiedGravityFather DiedMy Father Died Author:Paul Laffoley
“[Buckminster Fuller ] never got past his freshman year [in Harvard], because the guy was an insane womanizer and he did parties every night, never studied anything, never took a note, didn't care about anything and just had a blast. So they said, "We gotta let you go. You get zeros all the time." Today it wouldn't even matter, because they don't care if you can read.” IfsYearsSaidMatterCareTodayPastNightGuyPartyNotesDon't CareInsaneEvery NightThey SaidHarvardBlastFreshmanLetting You GoBuckminster FullerFreshman YearWomanizer Author:Paul Laffoley
“I hear some guy teaches a course in diagrammatic thinking now; he's written books on it and stuff like that, and so it was kind of natural for me. Because it was a way in which words naturally fitted into something that's visual. I was always interested in doing that.” ThinkingWayKindBookGuyCoursesStuffNaturalTeachWrittenVisuals Author:Paul Laffoley
“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.” PeopleThinkingMenShouldWellsMeanLongStillsEndsYoungGuyStuffLong TimeYoung ManTeslaYoung GuysLeon Author:Paul Laffoley
“I mean, these are really dedicated people [in Lovecraft Society] when it comes to [h.P.] Lovecraft. But in the top floor of the John Hay Library, you have all of Lovecraft's archives. And messing around in there, I noticed, I said, what are these paintings? And the librarian told me, "Well, those are Pickman's paintings." I said, "I thought this was like something he made up, like The Necronomicon, that kind of stuff." And he said no, that the guy actually existed.” PeopleWellsKindMeanMadeSaidGuyStuffPaintingLibraryDedicatedLibrarianLike SomethingArchivesHayLovecraft Author:Paul Laffoley
“Look at all the stuff the Existentialists did. You can start with [Pablo] Picasso, you know, and then Francis Bacon and other guys like that. What they were doing is depicting suffering. And that's exactly what a demon is, he's pretending that he isn't. So he can get more people down there. You know, misery loves company, that's the whole thing. So that's basically the pitch that I'm working on.” PeopleKnowsLooksWholeGuySufferingStuffCompanyMiseryDemonPretendingNow And ThenOther GuysExistentialist Author:Paul Laffoley
“H.P.Lovecraft could've been trying to do a Marx to Hegel, that kind of thing, in other words, turn the thing upside down and crawl around inside it. But, look, the guy was eating poorly, he had like a quart of ice cream a day. He was suffering constantly near the end. He wasn't concerned with his body at all, not the way we're concerned with our bodies nowadays.” WayTryingLooksKindEndsBodyGuySufferingTurnsEatingConcernedDown AndIceCreamIce CreamUpside DownHegelLovecraftThings Upside Down Author:Paul Laffoley
