David Copperfield Quotes

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

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.

You can just go to a magic shop or magic builder and buy what most magicians do, but that's not what I'm about. With 'Mindfreak' on television and 'Believe' live, I want to bring things that people have never seen before. That process is very difficult. It's very challenging, and you never know how long it's going to take - months or years.

When I did my first few television specials, my illusions were so advanced that it took a couple of years before the other illusionists could even figure out what I was doing, let alone try to imitate me.

The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.

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.'

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.

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.

Usually, about two years of work go into each illusion, whether it's big or small. Two years of work on each five-minute piece.

Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.

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

Penn and Teller love the very intellectual side of magic. Me, I'm more fun than them. They never look like they're having fun. They look angry.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

Every week it's another opportunity to really make that work and figure out how to make it work better. And I love that it's like theater, too, and the audience, and it's so short. It's only 20 minutes. It's like a haiku or something.

There's something about the Houdini act that is not always made clear - about the escape act in general.

We're on tour to kind of explain why we do what we do, how its done and how we put it together.

I get a lot of inspiration from the audience feedback to our live shows.

The stage show is, in some sense, highly theatrical. It's definitely not just a band in jeans playing rock and roll.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

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

Recently, I went up to Casino Rama to see Martin Short's show, just to see how he put it all together. And after the show, I went backstage and picked his brain to find out why he did certain things.

People don't understand how much time and work it takes to make somebody laugh, and how hard it is to write a script, to put together the story, the characters. When everyone laughs simultaneously, there's no greater feeling.

Magic is like special effects live, and I love to perform, so it sounded like doing magic tricks were a good way to entertain people.