Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As a magician, I try to show things to people that seem impossible. And 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 practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be. And that's what magic is to me.
Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.
Scientists want full proof under laboratory conditions. And the answer is very simple: When Im put under pressure, I cant perform. Even the phenomenon Im most known for. When Im on stage, Im not under pressure and it happens. In other important places, it happens. But in a laboratory where I really want it to happen, its very hard for me.
I got to watch Frank Capra, in his eighties, in action. You read all the stories about Frank Capra fighting with the head of Columbia, Harry Cohn, "It's my way or the highway." I got to watch that. He lambasted me, "You cannot do this. You will fail." Finally, after another hour of conversation, I convinced him to help me write the speech.
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.
You lose your sense of wonder the more you learn, right? When you go to film school and learn about moviemaking, you go to see movies and then only see where the lights are, where the cuts are, watching it from a technical basis, nodding your head, "Oh, that was good." The feeling of surprise, the feeling of being transported is further away.
Well I think everything up to this point that I've been exposed to in my life has had an influence on me in some way, shape, or form even if I'm not conscious of it. So I definitely think that my studies in wu-shu, kung-fu, karate, kenpo, taikwando, all of that stuff certainly has an affect. I don't think I follow any discipline traditionally.
Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.
The days of television as we knew it growing up are over. You have a bigger, wider world audience on the Internet, larger than any American television series. People don't watch television in the same context as before. Nowadays they watch their television on the Internet at their convenience. That's the whole wave, and it's now - not the future.
Either the phone is so seriously thin and flimsy that it is bendable with mere physical force, which I cannot believe given the extensive tests Apple would have done. Or -- and this is far more plausible -- somehow the energy and excitement of the 10 million people who purchased iPhones has awakened their mind powers and caused the phones to bend.
I'm trying to change theater, in my own way - not just magic. I say that humbly, because I'm learning every single day. I do 15 shows a week, and every single audience I have is like a test screening for you, when you listen and go, "Really? They laughed at that?" All over the stage I have lines, written onstage, that I'm changing every single day.
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.
A few years later, when I was still going to these meetings, I was also "second-acting" every Broadway show [walking in with the crowd after intermission]. I snuck in to see Grease with John Travolta in kind of a secondary part and Adrienne Barbeau playing Rizzo, into Pippin, hung out with Ben Vereen and Bob Fosse. It was an amazing time for a teenager.
Once you get into the era of the printed book, it gets a little easier. After years and years, you make a serious survey of that literature, and then you make it more specific depending on what kind of case appears. I never set out to collect material on cheating at bowling, but I found out that after 20 years, I had a lot of material on cheating at bowling.
Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.
One of the reasons I don't like to use the word "tricks" , I do think of them as theatrical pieces, and as pretentious as that might sound, there's a real reason for it. It's not the idea of tricking you; it's the idea of taking you along on this particular journey the way you would in any other theatrical situation. But, hopefully, you're going to be fooled at the end.
Michael Jackson did something that no one else in history has managed - he connected with people on every level imaginable, all over the world. He seemed to speak to people at their very core and achieved the impossible. He reached people on a deep emotional level. And that is what any great artist or showman dreams of doing. That is why Michael Jackson was so special to me.
To most magicians, cards themselves are marvels...For one thing, they feel special in your hand. Touching them, holding them, shuffling - the whole process is almost poetic. If you're in a room full of magicians and someone just mentions the word cards, within seconds, everyone is digging into their pockets and pulling out a deck of cards. It's one of the most amazing feelings ever.
I am at a loss to figure out how to rid my e-mail of those bottom-feeders of the electronic world, the generators of spam.... If I were Emperor of the World, I would lock all the spammers in a room and force them to watch nothing but TV commercials for the rest of their miserable lives, and I would condemn the people who respond to spammers to do nothing but clean the toilets in this room.
Really believe in yourself, and that no matter what anyone says to you, if you really have a dream and the passion - go for it! If you're willing to go through the rigors to get it, it will happen. It may not happen in your timeframe, but it will happen. I'm living proof of that. I was once on the other end of the spectrum, and now I'm living my dream. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision.
There was a guy named Ed Mishell. He was this grandfatherly guy who did all the illustrations for the catalogs and reviewed magic effects for the magic magazines, so all of the magic dealers would send him magic effects for free-it was a great deal. His basement was full of this stuff. He took me under his wing, and he would sneak me into the Society of American Magicians meetings in New York. It's the world's oldest magic organization.
I could vanish the silk better than Ben Vereen - that was for sure. So I think maybe they said, "Okay, maybe he has something to offer." Years pass and I get a bit of a career, and Ben Vereen ends up hosting one of my specials where I walked through the Great Wall of China. Things came full circle in kind of an ironic way, when you have that honor of people that have influenced you so much host your show. It's a huge experience in your life.
All these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology. For whether the lineaments of the body, countenance, or hand be inspected, whether dream or vision be seen, whether marking of entrails or mad inspiration be consulted, there must be a Celestial Figure first erected, by the means of whole indications, together with the conjectures of Signs and Similitudes, they endeavour to find out the truth of what is desired.
Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world.
Actually, I started as a ventriloquist and my music teacher said, "Why don't you emcee the talent show?" My act was out of the back of Boys' Life magazine-they had a whole series of jokes in the back of Boys' Life magazine for Boy Scouts. So my act was jokes with my ventriloquist figure, and it was really bad, but I walked into the classroom afterward and the kids went, "Wow, you're cool." I wasn't cool at all, but I thought, "Well, this is a pretty good deal."
Magic is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the virtues of things through the application of them one to the other.
... We in the USA have been depending on prayers, pleading, and self-abasement to a deity to bring us magical advantages, and have been encouraged to attribute our prosperity and general success among nations, to that sort of action. In my opinion, hard work and dedication to logic and reason ought to be recognized as the reasons for our achievements, not appeals to a mythical friend-in-the-sky. We got where we are in spite of, not because of, those incantations.
There was a small boy on crutches. I do not know his name, and I suspect I never will. But I will never forget his face, his smile, his sorrow. He is one of the millions robbed of hope and dignity by charlatans discussed in this book. Wherever and whoever he is, I apologize to him for not having been able to protect him from such an experience. I humbly dedicate this book to him and to the many others who have suffered because the rest of us began caring too late.
I went to visit Frank Capra, one of my idols, and did a kind of Judd Apatow interview with him. I said, "I'd like the Statue of Liberty to disappear, but I want to do it as a lesson in freedom, how valuable freedom is and what the world would be like without liberty." And Frank Capra looked at me and said, "David, I love your idea, but here's what you're going to do. You're going to try and it's not going to work; it's not going to disappear." And I said, "Mr. Capra, I can't do that."
There was a place in New York called Tannen's Magic. It still exists. But back in the day, it was really fantastic. You'd go into the old Wurlitzer Building, take the elevator to the 13th floor, which was labeled 14, because of bad luck, the elevator would open, and you'd be in heaven. It was all of these guys doing magic stuff with props. It's kind of gone now, that experience, the brick-and-mortar magic shop, but you really felt like you'd landed in the most amazing place in the world.
I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men -- for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune -- may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary.
I wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times about the amazing effect of shared wonder - how I have an audience filled with people who you'd think would hate each other, people from every religious category, all at the same show at the same time. And it's an amazing phenomenon to watch this shared sense of wonder, where these people who really don't like each other - for good and bad reasons, reasons that make sense and that don't make sense - are in the same room, experiencing this unification.
But to proceed; as in order and place, so also in matter of her Creation, Woman far excells Man. things receive their value from the matter they are made of, and the excellent skill of their maker: Pots of common clay must not contend with China-dishes, nor pewter utensils vye dignity with those of silver.... Woman was not composed of any inanimate or vile dirt, but of a more refined and purified substance, enlivened and actuated by a Rational Soul, whose operations speak it a beam, or bright ray of Divinity.
I was 16 at the time, and I came backstage and started hanging out with them. I said, "Well, maybe you can 'vanish' the silk this way." The opening was a black stage while the "Magic to Do" song started playing. All you saw were hands, lit by Jules Fisher, and then Ben Vereen would appear beyond the hands, and at the end of the scene he would vanish a silk. The spotlight would hit a red spot on the floor where you'd see the silk on the floor. He'd pull the silk out of the floor and it became the entire set coming out of the floor.
Science and technology were often used by [the magician of old], even before they came into the marketplace on a mass basis. For example, prior to the moving picture going into theatre, magicians were using the technique of images in motion as illusions in their shows. At that time the process was so new, an audience perceived it as magic. Also in the early stages of holograms magicians would use these images to baffle and mystify their fans. Hence, you always need to stay one step ahead of the technology game to "WOW" the audience.
A lot of people hate my skepticism, and I think I understand why. The psychics offer wonders and endless possibilities in a world that often seems difficult and mundane. They promise health, wealth, wisdom, eternal life. But if you examine the record, it's not the psychics but the hard-nosed scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life. And, to me, science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world -- not perfect -- but it's ours. So we'd better learn to live with it, the way it is.
There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized.