That's one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I'm very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.

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.

One of the reasons I don't like to use the word "tricks" , I do think of them as theatrical pieces, and as pretentious as that might sound, there's a real reason for it. It's not the idea of tricking you; it's the idea of taking you along on this particular journey the way you would in any other theatrical situation. But, hopefully, you're going to be fooled at the end.

Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.

Every acting gig isn't the same, every writing job isn't the same, every live performance isn't the same - the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.

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.

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