How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars

He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

The lure in art collecting and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust in paper money: it makes no sense when you really think about it. New artistic images are so vulnerable to opinion that it wouldn't take much more than a whim for a small group of collectors to decide that a contemporary artist was not so wonderful anymore, was so last year.

The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.

Or is it that I think too much?

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.