Jonathan Stroud Quotes

The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists.

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I didn't attend any of the court proceedings.

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.

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

I love amazing people. I love dazzling them. That's why I think performing magic is one of the greatest things a person can do.

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.

They just brought it up to me and said, 'Hey, this is what we're going to do.' They're going to put out a section and call it Judge's Chambers and give them little judge outfits, and we'll see what happens. I think it turned out great.

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

At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.

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.'

I stand for judgment: answer: shall I have it?

One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.

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

Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.

It's been very interesting. We've seen a lot of interesting testimony. We've seen a lot of interesting people, a lot of allegations, a lot of lies, a lot of misinformation and some truth.

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

Ours is the "land of the free"-nobody denies that-nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.)

You can't see the world through a mirror.

Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat

If life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car. And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.

The charges [government] brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense.