Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn't get easier. It just doesn't.

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.

I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.

In the winters, I enrolled in the hotel management program at Cornell University. I naively thought that I knew something about sleight-of-hand, entertainment and food, and that would be all I needed.

There are people who try to figure things out. Often, magic is presented in a way that sets up a challenge that I actually find kind of appalling. You know, "I'm clever, I can do something, and you don't know what it is." And that instills in the audience the idea that, "Yes, I do. You're not that clever."

I'm pretty fortunate that I'm in the films I'm in largely because the directors have asked me to be in them. I'd love to do more of them, but the writing and historical stuff I'll probably always do.

I know absolutely nothing about the 20th Century.