Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are your ready?'

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.

What's all this fuss about plutonium? How can something named after a Disney character be dangerous?

I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.

Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.

People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.