The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

Once you get into the era of the printed book, it gets a little easier. After years and years, you make a serious survey of that literature, and then you make it more specific depending on what kind of case appears. I never set out to collect material on cheating at bowling, but I found out that after 20 years, I had a lot of material on cheating at bowling.

For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.

My father was the Formica King of Long Island, and my mother was the daughter of a Bengal Lancer in India.

I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That's the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It's certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.

Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects.