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.

Have your cake and eat it... there's no other reason to have a cake

I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.

When [the magician] clicks his fingers and cards change to the four aces, we know we have experienced sleight of hand. Real magic would not be quite that quick and easy. Real magic would take investment. Real magic would draw you in, and make you nervous.

Liberating but hard to remember we're just bit-parts in the lives of people we know, who care very little for our secrets

To impress people as much as we would wish, we would first need to successfully adopt each of their value systems

Seems the seance has become the most complained-about show. It received 700 complaints. I might add that the prospect of me blowing my head off on live TV last year attracted only twenty. Fair enough, I suppose.