"I try to share what I've learned with other magicians, just as mentors did with me.  Magicians talk quite freely about secrets within the industry, but we don't share anything with people outside of the industry.  I actually believe magicians should talk about their secrets with the public more than they do.  By keeping our art form completely secret, we're actually devaluing it."

"Magic is a fascinating and primal thing.  What's most interesting is the psychology behind it.  People are desperate to experience wonder.  We are desperate to find mystery in our lives.  I believe it's innate; it's so hard-wired into our brains that we can't escape it."

"Magic is such a raw, emotional experience, and it can be used as a storytelling device.  Sometimes people scream and run away—what a profound effect!  There is no other art form that can do that.  You cannot make somebody gasp, scream, and run away by looking at a painting or watching a dance routine."

"Most experienced performers will say that they don't get nervous.  I don't get nervous anymore because everything that can be go wrong in my shows has already happened.  I've knocked my table over.  I've had an audience volunteer start crying.  I've had props break.  I've injured myself.  Literally anything that can go wrong has gone wrong, and now I know what to do when it does."

"Like Cliffhanger.  More people have seen how they did the helicopter shot in that than people have seen the movie!  Magicians keep their secrets to themselves.  And they know that as soon as they tell, someone will say, 'Are you kidding me?  That's so simple."  It's horrifying to me, that they do that.  People don't realize it, but as soon as they hear or see that, something dies inside them.  They're deader than they were.  They're not, like, happy to know about this stuff.  They're happy not to know about it.  And they shouldn't know about it.  It's nothing to do with the film!  And will only ruin the film!  Why would they talk about it?"

"I love magic tricks.  But the reason I like them so much is because it's possible to change the way someone thinks about the world through a magic trick.  It is possible to do that through other art forms, too, but it's not so immediate."

"If magic exploits our capacity to continuously, unconsciously modify events in the ongoing world to form a story, even at the expense of everything we know to be possible in the universe, then we are indeed master editors, tirelessly working to communicate to others and ourselves a meaningful tale."

"When I perform my day job as a kind of magician, I work with people's capacity to fool themselves with stories."

"The performers who fall into obscurity are the ones who don't take risks."

"I had the urge to do things differently, but school convinced me that was a problem.  In creative fields, being different is a good thing.  But until you can say you're a professional artist or performer, you're told that it's wrong to take a different path than everybody else.  You are described as awkward or difficult—so I was an awkward and difficult child."

"A good magic trick forces the spectator to tell a story that arrives at an impossible conclusion, and the clearer the story is, the better.  Normally, everything you need to solve the puzzle happens right in front of you, but you are made to care only about the parts that the magician wants you to.  When you join up those dots, so misleadingly and provocatively arranged, you are left with a baffling mystery.  A good magician might make the trick mean more, by elevating it beyond the mere disappearance or transposition of some props.  If it can be made to feel somehow relevant to you, rather than mere display of skill, then the story is likely to have more import and the trick more impact."

"When you're asked if you're qualified, you say yes.  Then you worry later about whether or not you're actually qualified."

"The art of fiction is, in large part, the art of small-scale illusions."