To have that radical a mind in that bourgeois-looking body was really hard for a lot of people to take, because, when my mother would want to have people over she'd tell [my father], "Don't start with the gravity stuff." And then he would invariably do this and the guests would look at each other and say, "Well, I think it's time to go now."

I was sent to the regular public schools until I had to go to Belmont Hill. Because I wasn't doing anything. The public school was nothing, just a total waste of time.

I first heard of [Orfeo Angelucci] from Giuseppe Conti who gave me some books by him.

[Buckminster Fuller] would pretend to be deaf at the right times.

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.

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.

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."