I'm really trying hard not to do anything that has been done before. So knowing everything I can about the legacy of magic challenges my team and I to invent new illusions.

You can feel better about yourself in a very short period of time depending on the kind of magic that you are doing.

I will now make a scorpion appear in Osama bin Laden's pants

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

I need a form of escape even when I'm working really hard.

Actually, I started as a ventriloquist and my music teacher said, "Why don't you emcee the talent show?" My act was out of the back of Boys' Life magazine-they had a whole series of jokes in the back of Boys' Life magazine for Boy Scouts. So my act was jokes with my ventriloquist figure, and it was really bad, but I walked into the classroom afterward and the kids went, "Wow, you're cool." I wasn't cool at all, but I thought, "Well, this is a pretty good deal."

When the time came to say, "Mom, I want to do this as a job," it was brutal. She was really against it. There were screaming matches. Some people are shut down by that and get defeated by it, and other people are empowered by the negativity. My father kind of encouraged me through that.