The desire to impress is an efficient means of bringing out one’s least impressive qualities.

Magic is not inherently anything. It is what you sell it as.

A lot of unconfident kids do tricks because it's the quickest route to impressing people," he explains. "You can stand behind something amazing and people think you're amazing.

Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

I would like a bit of me - that’s how I put my back out!

There are things in your life which you are in control of, and those you're not. You need to not care about those things which you're not in control of, and when you come to really understand that, you can go from being really upset about something to that lovely feeling of being a kid where everything is okay.

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.