Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books.

I'm just waiting for people to start asking me to make the rain disappear.

No self-respecting gay guy would have ever made some of the hair and clothing choices I am still trying to live down.

Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

Demonic figures and occult themes have disappeared from modern magic.

For me to grow, I have to know about the foundation that came before.

For my father, being kind was natural... I have to really work at it. I love competing and winning, conquest - not words you usually associate with kindness.

I act like I'm 14, if you haven't figured that out yet.

I am fortunate to have the resources to have many methods to do each of my illusions.

I find revealing the secrets of magic quite reprehensible.

I have always been interested in pushing magic forward.

I need a form of escape even when I'm working really hard.

I really did sneak into Broadway shows, starting when I was 12.

I was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.

I'm really trying hard not to do anything that has been done before. So knowing everything I can about the legacy of magic challenges my team and I to invent new illusions.

If I was gay, why would I hide it?

It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.

It's okay for me to be gay, but God didn't make me that way.

Magic is my paint.

Magic really helped me.

Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.

My show is constantly evolving... new tricks are added, old ones are dropped... so it stays fresh. But it's the randomly selected participants from the audience that make it fresh and provide some of the best comic relief.

Never stop listening to your audience.

There is a safe spot within every tornado. My job is to find it.

When you're a guy and meet a girl the first time, you do whatever it takes.

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

Dreams are illusions, and we can't let go of them because we would be dead.

When youre a guy and meet a girl the first time you do whatever it takes.

Magicians are the people who began to use film as an illusion on stage.

My uncle's house burned down when I was 6 years old. We got out safely. But ever since, I've had a nightmare of dying in a fire.

The most important thing is presentation.

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.