Keith Barry Quotes

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

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.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

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.

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

Magic, whether it's mind magic or conjuring, is about the cheapest and quickest way of impressing people, and I think if you don't grow out of that as a magician then it shows, and people get a bit sick of that after a while, because it starts to feel like posturing. So I grew out of it.

Misdirection is one of my strengths.

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

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.

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

When we go to play, you flip around and flash around and everything, and then they're not gonna see nothin' but what their eyes see. Forget about their ears.

The magician and the politician have much in common: they both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.

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.

Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying.

I don't have the attention span to practice sleight of hand.

I like creating the illusion that suddenly I've just done five things at once.

If you do magic, it's the quickest most fraudulent route to impressing people.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

Tell the truth or trump-but get the trick.

Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.

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

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

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.'