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

In magic, it takes two or three years for me to create a 5-minute illusion for me to get it to the level I want.

To make [parents] happy, I went to Fordham University for three weeks, while at the same time running ads in Variety, "magician-actor David Copperfield."

You'd go in the magic shop [as an 8-year-old ], and you'd walk up to the magicians doing stuff, and they'd turn their back on you. "Oh my gosh, I wish they would accept me." It really lit a fire. I really wanted to succeed.

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.

But Vegas is really my first home.

My father kind of encouraged me through that. Exactly,[work] not as an actor, obviously, but as someone in show business that had some success. He told me to live the impossible. "Live the impossible!"