Penn Jillette Quotes

To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.

I love anything to do with ventriloquism and magic.

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.

Magicians are the most honest people in the world; they tell you they're gonna fool you, and then they do it.

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.

I think magic, whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple. It's practice, it's training, and it's - It's practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.

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

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

Magic is the oldest part of the show business profession. It can now be used as a forward-thinking tool to build a child's confidence. It has been an amazing part in many entertainers' lives, including Steve Martin and the late Johnny Carson.

If there are two things Penn & Teller stand for, it's the truth & lying, although not necessarily in that order.

This to me is the secret comedy of all author interviews, down through the ages, even the good ones in the 'Paris Review' and places. They're all acting. It's like watching a person in a play.

I just love making a fool out of myself. I made my living as a clown at kids' parties for about three years.

When you're in comedy, people always come up and say, 'Oh, it must be so hard.' It really isn't hard unless you're not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

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.

The only secret of magic is that I'm willing to work harder on it than you think it's worth.

Make the hard ones look easy and the easy ones look hard.

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

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team.

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.

There is no magic. There are only magicians.

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

I think I'm just a comedian who's a pretty good con man, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

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