Keith Barry Quotes

I came up with the term 'mindfreak' because I didn't like the word 'magician.' I felt like I wanted to coin a term that would be basically the reaction to my art. It would be a mindfreak and so that's why I came up with that. But, many people say I'm really a student of humanity and psychology.

Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

Studying neuro-linguistic programming is what teaches you how to implant and extract thoughts. Mixing psychology, hypnotism and magic somewhat goes into this area called mentalism, which is what I mostly do. It's magic of the mind.

Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident.

I think magic, whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple. It's practice, it's training, and it's - It's practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.

When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.

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

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

He spent hours and hours and hours practising these conjuring tricks. It's just such a curious thing.

Magic is the oldest part of the show business profession. It can now be used as a forward-thinking tool to build a child's confidence. It has been an amazing part in many entertainers' lives, including Steve Martin and the late Johnny Carson.

Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment.

I'm not a big fan of doing it because I get really frustrated because I can't do any of the tricks, but I love to watch magic.

Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often, the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.

By combining elements such as hypnosis, magic, neurolinguistic programming and psychology, I can make it appear that I can hack into people's brains.

Whether you're shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance.

For me, there is very little difference between magic and art. To me, the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing: It's like when the stage magician pulls the rabbit from the hat.

If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.

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?'

All David Blaine is is a good-looking magician.

It was just like a digital fixation with cards and math and science and then I started to look at images of great magicians from Houdini down the line.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

I definitely went through my magic phase. I think all little boys do at some point or another - they get fascinated by magic tricks.

David Blaine, I think, was the first TV magician to really turn the camera around and make it about the spectator's experience. That's really what magic is all about.

The goal is to really blur the line. Can you perform a magic trick in a way that someone doesn't think it's a magic trick but is something amazing they haven't seen before? Then they have to wrestle with reality.

There's magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D printers are magical. So I feel that as a magician, if I can pull off something that seems real and convincing enough that I can explain why it's happening and have people believe it, it really is fascinating. And funny.