Doug Henning Quotes

The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.

I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

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 I had auditioned for 'Merlin' on magic alone, I don't think I'd have got it. Like any kid, I probably had a magic kit, but it's not something I ever pursued. I've never watched a magic show like David Copperfield or used him to base my character on, but I really like David Blaine and Darren Brown. They are doing wonders.

You can just go to a magic shop or magic builder and buy what most magicians do, but that's not what I'm about. With 'Mindfreak' on television and 'Believe' live, I want to bring things that people have never seen before. That process is very difficult. It's very challenging, and you never know how long it's going to take - months or years.

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.

I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.

All types of magic performance have a purpose. Even if it's an amateur who's trying out slight of hand on YouTube.

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.

When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.

He spent hours and hours and hours practising these conjuring tricks. It's just such a curious thing.

I'm such a proponent of the theatrical experience and the cinematic experience, and we've reached this point where the magicians are not only giving away their tricks, but they're telling us how they're doing the tricks in advance before you even come to the magic show. It'd be nice to get a little of the mystery back in.

I am a street performer as much as I am a stage performer. Yes, I have a television show, but every trick, every 'Mindfreak' you see, I can do live.

In magic, it takes two or three years for me to create a 5-minute illusion for me to get it to the level I want.

I consider myself a showman, and I love magic, and I love art, and I love performance, and they're all separate.

I was the youngest member of the New York International Brotherhood of Magicians. It was me and a bunch of 60-year-old Jewish men.

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

If people are fans of 'Mindfreak,' they are going to be so excited with 'Believe.' They are actually going to see those illusions that people think can only happen with trick photography.

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.

When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.

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.'

I started performing when I was 9 or 10, doing magic.

I love anything to do with ventriloquism and magic.

For the most part, any serious magic show is not using very much technology newer than theatrical lights.