Teller Quotes

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

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

In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.

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

There is no magic. There are only magicians.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

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.

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

I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician.

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 don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

Great liars are also great magicians.

Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment.

Magic is all about directing attention. If I didn't want you to look at my right hand then I don't look at it.

Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology. If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful.

Hey, I fool the camera. I'm a liar, a magician.

If you want to talk about magic, the stuff that blows me away is the stuff that's done close up.

Well, I also love magic, which is, you know, different than showmanship. Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder.

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

Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

But the whole idea of the transformation... mystery, transformation, and manipulations - those were the things that Marcel was a magician at. That's his magic.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

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.

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

What I do is rooted in magic - it's got a big foot planted firmly in conjuring, even if the other foot's planted in psychological techniques.