Orson Welles Quotes

Drew was a director, and I'm a magician.

I'm the luckiest man in the world - performing 500 shows a year and loving what I do - illusion IS my day to day life.

I am a street performer as much as I am a stage performer. Yes, I have a television show, but every trick, every 'Mindfreak' you see, I can do live.

Once I go on stage, the atmosphere is totally theatrical. The greater the illusion, the greater the intensity of the excitement it creates.

I started performing when I was 9 or 10, doing magic.

I went to NYU completely with the idea I wanted to be the next David Copperfield.

I could vanish the silk better than Ben Vereen - that was for sure. So I think maybe they said, "Okay, maybe he has something to offer." Years pass and I get a bit of a career, and Ben Vereen ends up hosting one of my specials where I walked through the Great Wall of China. Things came full circle in kind of an ironic way, when you have that honor of people that have influenced you so much host your show. It's a huge experience in your life.

Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat

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

I've been doing magic since I was five years old, and when I was trying to get acting gigs, I found I could make a good living at it. It's great to kind of shake the cobwebs off and get the feeling of a live audience again. I love close-up magic, the card stuff, the coin stuff, the really up-close David Blaine stuff.

You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don't see where they get the pigeons from, you don't really know how they're doing it.

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.

When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.

Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.

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 anything to do with ventriloquism and magic.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

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.

Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better!

A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.

The funny thing about 'The Naked Brothers Band' movie was that we tricked the audience into thinking that we were actually rock stars.

I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

The stuff that is done on Broadway is hardly theatre. It is part magic show, part rock concert, and part conjuring things.

I always wanted to do magic tricks - I feel like that could be the the next wave.