The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.

For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.

The book says we may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us.

Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects.

Every acting gig isn't the same, every writing job isn't the same, every live performance isn't the same - the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.

I love amazing people. I love dazzling them. That's why I think performing magic is one of the greatest things a person can do.

My father was the Formica King of Long Island, and my mother was the daughter of a Bengal Lancer in India.

If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That's the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It's certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.

I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just interested.

Magic is a powerful art that can support a weak performer.

Rest time is the waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.

... and all we knew about her that we didn't know the night before was that she had eyes like pansies and skin like the moon.

The biggest obstacle to people becoming better is that you have to really want to be a good person in order to be a better person, and most people would rather be other things.

Gloom and solemnity are entirely out of place in even the most rigorous study of an art originally intended to make glad the heart of man.

But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk.

I got a liberal arts education just because I felt like I should to keep my parents happy, but it was for them. If it was up to me, I would've just moved to New York.

The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.

I was born in 1935, and as far back as I can remember, I was sketching designs. My first subject was an aircraft, which I imagined myself piloting.

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.

Sometimes in this game its as good to be lucky as it is to be good.