Quotes from Tom Noddy

Bubbles have more colors than a rainbow.

The bubbles are thinner than wavelengths of light.

First I got a yo-yo. I got good and then I got bored. Next I got one of those wooden paddles with a rubber ball at the end of an elastic band. I got good and then I got bored. Then I tried bubbles. I got good but I never got bored.

I was in my hippie stage. It was tough for my father. First it was the long hair, then the bubbles.

I've been called a career hippie. I like that, I like that a lot.

Bubbles are incredibly basic. We think of them in that way just because they're a kid's toy. But I think it's more basic than childhood, something primal - the liquid, the flow, the shapes. We were liquid at one point in our development.

At 20 years old, I was better at playing with toys than I was as a kid.

I've never had much and I've never needed much. If I had only two bucks in my pocket, I knew I could spend it because I could always do another show of some kind, even on a sidewalk.

I am not too interested in leaving the street people and joining the Establishment. I prefer street folks.

There is a dream on the street. I hear it constantly - finding a piece of land, raising food, building a house. I hear talk of hopelessness. The price of land, you know. Housing is impossible. They are trapped in a cycle. How can you ask for a job after you've been sleeping in the bushes all night?

I worked in a factory for 10 months with the aim of going traveling in Europe. I bought a bottle of bubble stuff and spent every night playing with bubbles. After 10 months, I went to Europe and did bubble shows on the street.

When I blow the head off a glass of Guinness or eat a slice of white bread, there are so many bubbles!

I love hands-on science and teaching the kids. I love to see kids experiment with things that they can make happen. Not just something you read the directions to and put it together that way. Things that can be constructed, something they can touch. What a great day when you can touch a child's mind with these ideas.

I was really inspired by keeping alive these things of my childhood.

I'd do the Mount St. Helen's trick, where the smoke comes out of the top. I wouldn't even have to look at people. I'd hear that 'Ahhhh!'

I tried to do a puppet show on the streets, and I wasn't a very good street performer. But I found that I could stand in one place in Central Park and bounce a soap bubble on my arm, and I didn't have to gather a crowd for the puppet show. I had a crowd.

I took a job at a factory in New Jersey to try to save money to go to Europe. When I took the job, I set a date for quitting. I was going to hitchhike around, be a hippie, see the world. I just wanted to be responsible long enough to get up the money to get there and trip around.

If you look at the soap bubbles in the sink when you're doing dishes, you'll see the incredible diversity of shapes in there. There are cubes in there; there are decahedrons and tetrahedrons; there are odd, irregular shapes without names, you know.

Bubbles are just a little liquid soap and a breath of air.

The mid '70s was the golden age. A lot of things were being born on the street then, and there was a lot of experimentation.

There's never an ugly bubble.

I've never blown an ugly bubble. Never. They're all beautiful. They're like jewels, transient jewels.

It's hard to blow an ugly bubble.

My initial attraction was just the beauty. The colors were so beautiful, the spheres were so nearly perfect.