A Quote by Paul Laffoley

Eventually, to get through school, I would make good meaningless blobs if I had to. And so they thought I was falling in with them and stuff like that. But on the playground, kids would come up to me and say, "I need three Supermans and a Captain Midnight by four o'clock because I'm going to sell them to somebody else." So I'd take all their lunch money and whip these things out, and they'd have to stick them in their underwear to get the pictures home, because if the teacher ever found out about that.
There was this conflict within me because so many people would come up to me to ask for prayers for all sorts of things, and 50% would be about money like, 'How can I pay for the tuition fee of my kids?' And I could only pray for them. I had no advice to give them because I didn't know anything about money.
I grew up on movie sets, so it was something I just found familiar. When I was growing up also, in high school, I would audition for things and my parents let me audition for things - with the thought that I wouldn't get them. And then I would get them... sometimes, and it would surprise them.
My generation remembered going to the movies as an event. We would see these things, we would bring them home, and we would think about them for years because it would take a long time before they would go on television where you could re-experience the fun that you had when you watched them.
It was hard telling those kids...that I wasn't going to be there this year. And I knew I was going to miss them. I won't have an opportunity to see them again, unless they stop by the house. Now during the summer, I got lots of notes; kids would stop by the house. I'd be pulling weeds or something and they would come up and give me a hug and say, 'Oh, I can't believe it, this is so wonderful!' and just get very excited about it. It was hard not being in school. I would have loved to have gone back to school.
I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.
Breakfast is the best time for me to figure out what my kids are doing. Right after you wake them up at breakfast, you pepper them with questions. You can get in there because they're not protecting what they thought was cool: "What happened yesterday?" "Oh, Matthew stole my book and ran away and it was really annoying..." That wouldn't happen after lunch, because their defenses are up. In the morning, if you lull them into a comfortable place, you get more honesty, and that's without being a detective.
As good as we were, we didn’t win a National Championship until 1993, mainly because we kept losing to Miami on missed kicks. I used to get mad because nobody else would play Miami. Notre Dame would play them, then drop them. Florida dropped them. Penn State dropped them. We would play Miami and lose by one point on a missed field goal, and it would knock us out of the National Championship. I didn’t want to play them, either, but I had to play them. That’s why I said, 'When I die, They’ll say, ‘At least he played Miami.'
I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them--which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it.
Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.
Take a bunch of little kids to the beach and they all make art. Adults are too stupid to call it art, but it is art. They'll use their imaginations, make drama, make up characters, make pictures in the sand, they'll make up songs that no one's ever heard before. All kids, I think, are creative, but they get it pounded out of them in school.
I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?
I fell in love with the classical crossover genre when I was on AGT. I found out that I could use the microphone to establish a deeper intimacy with the audience. I did not portray an opera character; I was my true self. I would sing a four-to-five minute piece for the audience and then I could talk to them and say "Hi" to them! I would not need to act out scenes where my character was dying from tuberculosis or killing somebody else on stage, I could have a nice conversation with them.
I would sit at the table with the black kids during lunch, and we'd do our banter back and forth. But occasionally, I'd get up and I'd go sit down with the white kids and chat with them and what not. Of course, because I come from the black table they would look at me like, 'Why are you here?'
I had to first convince them [prostitutes] that I wasn't a journalist who would yet again put out a notion about them they wouldn't necessarily care for or who would victimize them. You know, journalists come and go. If they come twice, it's a lot. But I come 10 times and hang out with them and share stuff. If you connect with someone just once, that's something. But if you can connect twice, that's something else.
I've always got stuff in my head in case I meet somebody like Steven Spielberg or someone like that, where I can hopefully say something to them that nobody else has ever said and get a laugh out of them.
When you have no kids, you can come home, play video games, watch TV. Now I come home and my wife is looking at me like, I want to get out the door. She's been with them all day. So, as soon as you come home, you're a human jungle gym, dancing, doing things with them.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!