Chuck Close Quotes

There is not a physicist in the world who can perceive when a parlor magician palms off playing-cards.

The key is for the audience never to know, so I have a plan B for every illusion.

Magic is the only profession where it's easy to lie about your talent. If you do a trick and you can learn it very quickly, you can fool somebody into thinking you're a great magician.

Everything that I spent my entire life dedicated to, which is this art of mentalism, of magic... I don't see it and feel it and experience it like I first did when I was getting involved in this art. I try to look at it as a spectator but unless I get amnesia I still can't overlook that. I can appreciate the performance but I would love to be fooled.

I hate giving away tricks, you have to create an impression and not an image. You want audiences to look at certain places and not look at other places. And when you've got the help of modern-day abilities with technology, it's a much more natural look.

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.

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

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

Like when you go to a magic show and you know how they do the illusions. That's how I am when I watch any movies where they have people flying through the air.

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 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.

If you do sleight of hand without trying to cheat someone, that's what magic is.

A magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, and actors pull truth from fiction.

Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't!

What's the main thing that makes magic magic? The fact that no one believes that it's possible.

Magic things are fond of deceptions.

Where there's smoke, there's bound to be mirrors.

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

The idea that I [should] trust my eyes more than the stats, I don't buy that because I've seen magicians pull rabbits out of hats and I know that the rabbit's not in there.

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.

Harry Collins was the first magician I ever saw back in 1965 when I was five years old. He was doing a magic show and I was the volunteer from the audience.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

I realised how much misdirection is in stunt co-coordinating. It's similar to magic, the tricks we use to make people think the stunt is real. I also have a lifelong fascination with gambling cheats. I'm not one, but I do have a fascination with it.