When I was a kid, people wanted to be an astronaut. Today, kids want to be famous, and that's totally the wrong approach. You have to have authenticity in what you're doing. You have to really care about the core message of what you're saying, and then everything else will fall into place.

Magic is used in espionage, all the time, for clandestine things. I've got a whole library from a gentleman who was hired by the CIA to create magic technology for the use of anti-terrorism.

Everything that you'd see on The Ed Sullivan Show was at the Tannen's Magic. You'd think that if you could afford a trick like Doc Nixon's Dove Vanish, then you could be on The Ed Sullivan Show as an 8-year-old kid.

What I've tried to do in my stage magic is to take a trick and give it an emotional hook.

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 was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.

I am fortunate to have the resources to have many methods to do each of my illusions.