Lance Burton Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm not a big fan of doing it because I get really frustrated because I can't do any of the tricks, but I love to watch magic.

Of course, in all magic tricks there's a secret.

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

Whether you're shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance.

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.

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.

Growing up, yeah, I had a magic kit with learn tricks and learn card tricks, but I was never... I used to watch whatever magic special was on as a kid, but then, it's not that I lost interest, but to be a magician, you really, it's really hard work. Learning lines is hard enough; learning sleight of hand, that's real practice.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

I love anything to do with ventriloquism and magic.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

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.

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.

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

When I first came to L.A., I worked at the Magic Castle, and it was so much fun. But the best part of magic for me these days is not having to do it for a living. It's being able to pull a trick out when people least expect it, when they don't know that you do magic.

Generally, magicians don't know what to say, so they say stupid and redundant crap like, 'Here I am holding a red ball.'

I did magic at children's parties when I was a kid.

I remember finding a Houdini book at the library and seeing an image of him chained on the side of a building. He looked so intense and scary, and I couldn't get that image out of my head. That started building up my love of magic.

One day, I saw a magic show, and I was like, 'I have to learn how to do this!' Every time I went to Las Vegas, I had to get at least two or three tricks from the magic shops.