But when I go off stage I don't have a deck of cards with me all the time.

I'm the luckiest man in the world - performing 500 shows a year and loving what I do - illusion IS my day to day life.

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!"

I love what I'm doing, I love creating new things.

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.

All of the [Bob] Fosse-esque movements and point of view informed years and years of what I would do.

Reading [Judd Apatow] book, about his background, I think there's a great similarity. What gives him the fire to work hard? He worked hard, researching the comedians of the time, what touched him about it.