Demetri Martin Quotes

All magic is 'Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over.'

If you go to a magic show, you don't want to see logic.

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.

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

The problem with stage magic is that it looks really good, but everyone knows there's a trick box.

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?'

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 always say that I love magic but I hate magicians. I like being fooled. If you wave your hands in front of my face and I think you're doing a trick, I'm easily impressed. If you pull a quarter out of my ear, I'm quite certain you're a wizard. But I don't like the way most magicians don't act like they're magical; they act like show business dicks.

Disappearing act? That's a magic trick, isn't it? I like magic tricks!

If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.

You know, I'm not very good at magic - I can only do half of a trick. Yes - I'm a member of the Magic Semi-circle.

Because I have been a magician for many years, people have often asked me whether I ever have sawn a woman in half. I reply, Oh, yes I've sawn over seventy women in half in my lifetime, and I'm learning the second half of the trick now.

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.

I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing.

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

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

In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.

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.

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

One day, I saw a magic show, and I was like, 'I have to learn how to do this!' Every time I went to Las Vegas, I had to get at least two or three tricks from the magic shops.

I wish what I do was all real. Some of it's real, some of it's an illusion and I try to blur the line between both, but unfortunately I've got to be honest with you. Taking a $1 bill and turning it into a $100 - unfortunately it's not real.

As a kid, I kind of spent my life being amazed by being tricked. I love being tricked. I still love it today.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

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.