Teller Quotes

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 real secret of magic lies in the performance.

But when I go off stage I don't have a deck of cards with me all the time.

Actors and magicians are both performers, and they represent things that are not necessarily who they are.

I'm friends with Criss Angel. Criss has offered me a million times to go downstairs and see the setup. I don't want to see it. I just want to go, 'God, how did you do that?'

When you're learning how to do magic, the first rule is 'never reveal a secret.' In a way, by telling someone I'm a magician, it kind of gives away the best secret of all... How interesting to take the magician out of the equation of a magic show.

We all enjoy a magic show, but we don't demand a Q&A afterward explaining how it was done.

If you do magic, it's the quickest most fraudulent route to impressing people.

I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

Magic, historically, has been a man doing tricks with no wider story behind it.

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

I'm such a proponent of the theatrical experience and the cinematic experience, and we've reached this point where the magicians are not only giving away their tricks, but they're telling us how they're doing the tricks in advance before you even come to the magic show. It'd be nice to get a little of the mystery back in.

I consider myself a showman, and I love magic, and I love art, and I love performance, and they're all separate.

I don't put a girl in a box and clap my hands three times, and she's gone. I get in the box, and I vanish, and I reappear at the other side of the stage. That way, people don't think, 'That's a great illusion.' They think, 'Doug's a great magician.'

All types of magic performance have a purpose. Even if it's an amateur who's trying out slight of hand on YouTube.

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 goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

And the nature of magic is all in the person's experience. Whether the magician is using a highly complex sleight of hand or he's just got two cards that are the same, it doesn't matter: it's how it's sold and how magical it is for the person that matters.

I'm fascinated by the similarities and differences between comedians and magicians.

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll.

My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.

Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but I'm more interested in telling a story.

I don't think I'm an entertainer. I never think, 'Wow, I can't wait to get the crowd moving.' Some of my favorite bands never moved an inch.

Magic and new technology have always walked hand in hand - even back in the days of Robert Houdin.