Latest Paul Laffoley Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

  School, Worry, Say Anything

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• [H.P.Lovecraft] is thrust into some kind of outer space realm, like here [pointing toward the painting in progress]. In other words, he's recognized he's gone through R'lyeh, the Sunken City of R'lyeh, and then Cthulhu, the extraterrestrial, calls his band of worshippers home to recognize him as the anti-christ. This is all in The Necronomicon, something Lovecraft actually did make up.

  Paul Laffoley

  Home, Cities, Space

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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.

  Paul Laffoley

  Ice, Guy, Suffering

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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

  Thinking, People, Impossible

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• You know, Mick Jagger's "Sympathy for the Devil." I think it was inspired by that [H.P.Lovecraft stories]. You don't know who's reading what, you know. It just comes out once in a while in the pop culture.

  Paul Laffoley

  Reading, Thinking, Devil

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• I think [H.P. Lovecraft] recognized what he was dealing with, he was dealing with demons. And he was dealing with creatures that're suffering. There's no way out of this suffering.

  Paul Laffoley

  Thinking, Suffering, Way

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• The whole thing that Dante [Alighieri] did was summed up in the medieval world. It's like St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologica. He didn't invent it, he just put it all in one package. You get twelve fat books there sitting in any library. Whereas... I think if Joshi thinks [H.P.] Lovecraft was doing anything like that, just throwing together all this stuff to form a kind of anti-mythology, that's where I would disagree with him.

  Paul Laffoley

  Book, Thinking, Library

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• From the time of Dante [Alighieri], when you have the Ptolemaic universe, you had God on the outside like a hypersphere, and then in the center you have the Earth, all the seven heavens and layers, and then you have the Mount of Purgatory and Hell right in the center, and here's Satan flapping his wings and he keeps making the lake of Cocytus ice so you can't get out. So, again, where Heaven and Hell are, who the hell knows that now?

  Paul Laffoley

  Ice, Wings, Lakes

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• For years [H.P] Lovecraft was defined as an atheist. Well, he wasn't saying anything about what he really was at all. He wasn't even an agnostic. That's exactly what the situation is, in other words, when you enter an eternal realm. You've got to know there is no religion.

  Paul Laffoley

  Atheist, Years, Agnostic

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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.

  Paul Laffoley

  People, Guy, Suffering

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• Now, we know this is what [H.P.] Lovecraft was into. Because he kept talking about how he wasn't interested in religion. In a heaven state there is no religion, meaning that you're seeing the whole thing ... I mean, to worship something means that it's something beyond you, right? In other words, it's not being revealed to you.

  Paul Laffoley

  Mean, Talking, Heaven

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• The whole theory of what Satan is, it's Lucifer, the highest of the seraphim, the bearer of God's light, who at a certain point comes to believe he is what is being revealed to him.

  Paul Laffoley

  Believe, Light, Satan

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• I mean, even New York isn't in any great shape anymore in relation to the rest of the world.

  Paul Laffoley

  New York, Mean, World

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• Boston is not an avant garde place. It stays literally 15 to 20 years behind New York at all times.

  Paul Laffoley

  New York, Years, Boston

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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.

  Paul Laffoley

  Mean, People, Guy

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• I belong to the Lovecraft Society, which meets at the University. They do things like follow in Lovecraft's footsteps, just like he followed in Edgar Allan Poe's footsteps. I mean the actual footfalls, you know, like they're going out looking for sasquatch, this kind of stuff.

  Paul Laffoley

  Mean, Sasquatch, Stuff

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• It's called "Pickman's Mephitic Models," based on the story [Pickman's Model by H. P. Lovecraft].Certain things about it many people don't realize. Pickman was a real painter who lived between 1888 and 1926. Now, there's a question mark [gesturing toward the writing in the margins of the painting], because Lovecraft claims that he turned into a ghoul. God knows how old he is now.

  Paul Laffoley

  Real, Writing, Ghouls

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• I think [H. P. Lovecraft] knew the whole gamut. He just didn't believe any of it! He probably liked to use the esoteric stuff because he knew it would tick people off and freak them out.

  Paul Laffoley

  Believe, Thinking, People

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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

  Journey, Boston, Able

  Interview With Robert Guffey, www.paranoiamagazine.com.

• I started with "Pickman's Model," because it was about Boston. I mean, what I loved about [H. P. Lovecraft], at first is his sense of scholarship of an area, setting an environment, enlivening it. I think that's one of the secrets of writing.

  Paul Laffoley

  Mean, Writing, Thinking

  Interview With Robert Guffey, www.paranoiamagazine.com.

• In other words, [ H.P. Lovecraft] was areligious, asexual, neurasthenic, he just didn't want to react to the world. Like Virginia Woolf, who considered religion the ultimate obscenity.

  Paul Laffoley

  Virginia, Want, World

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• When I was at Brown. In other words, I'd heard about [H.P. Lovecraft], but I didn't pay that much attention till I happened to go to a meeting about it. And then I got just totally turned on.

  Paul Laffoley

  Attention, Pay, Lovecraft

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• [Nikola Tesla] said he had no interest in the spiritual. He didn't believe in telepathy, didn't believe in any of that stuff, didn't believe in any religion, and he just thought all these people were being superstitious and wanted them to go away. And in that way he was very close to H.P. Lovecraft, who was almost a believing atheist.

  Paul Laffoley

  Spiritual, Atheist, Believe

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• [Nikola Tesla] was thinking of parts actually moving, like exchanging positions in space through time. This would go over here, then that would go over there, and then something else would happen.

  Paul Laffoley

  Moving, Thinking, Space

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

• 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

  Thinking, Tesla, Way

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com