I thought instead of burying myself under dirt, I'd bury myself under water so everybody could see that you're there.

My mother encouraged it so much. She was so supportive. Even if as a kid, I would do the dumbest trick, which now that I look back on some things, she would love it, she would say that's amazing, or if I'd make the ugliest drawing, she would hang it up. She was amazing.

We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe. We are stronger and more resourceful than we know, and we can endure much more than we think we can.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.

Besides prostitution, magic is one of the oldest art forms that exist.

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.

I'd always wanted to do these types of things - pieces of magic I could put out not as illusions, but really doing it.