Penn Jillette Quotes

There's real drama in performing live. You never know how it's going to be.

Living as an actor is rather like living life on the trapezes in a circus. Every time you jump on, you have to pray that, when the time comes for you to jump off, there is another trapeze swinging your way.

It's thrilling to be onstage and to not know, literally, what the next moment is going to bring. To just submit to the not-knowing-ness of it.

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.

There are going to be screw-ups, mistakes, confusion, and missteps. One hopes they won’t be fatal.

I love the stage - the fact that you only have one take to get it right, the interaction with the audience, and how every show is different even though you're doing the same thing.

Success is unpredictable and fragile.

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

What I've tried to do in my stage magic is to take a trick and give it an emotional hook.

There's something about being a comedian that means you have to not be scared of failing because failing is part of the process.

I wouldn't say that I was a born performer, because I work very hard at it.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

I think a show is for fun, and the thing about playing live is that you make mistakes, and that's what's sort of exciting about it.

I know the nature of comedy, and you never know what will happen with the next movie or whether people will find it funny.

I really love live performing!

The more you perform and get out there, I guess the more practice you have at it and the better you are and the more comfortable you are on stage.

Thankfully, I have a background as an actor, and you learn how to live in that world of not knowing what's going to happen next.

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

As an actor, you don't know what is going to come next.

You can get a big gust of wind, and your Olympics are over.

My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn't know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.