No self-respecting gay guy would have ever made some of the hair and clothing choices I am still trying to live down.

Marriage is like a formality for me.

My mother was really loving and wonderful and tough as hell.

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.

I started as a ventriloquist, a very bad ventriloquist. And people saw my lips moving and it was ridiculous, so finally I decided I'd better change my occupation.

It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.

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.