"I'm more apt to cry at something beautiful than at something sad."
"Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."
"Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself."
"Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying."
"Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son."
"In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples' lives."
"Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team."
"Doing beautiful things is its own reward."
"If you do something that you're proud of, that someone else understands, that is a thing of beauty that wasn't there before - you can't beat that."
"I'm a lazy sod."
"If there isn't at least the threat of violence in art, it tends to be kind of tiresome."
"As a kid, I was a Hitchcock lover; I cared about the dark side of things."
"People come up to me on the street and make some little joke - like they'll say, 'Excuse me, sir, what time is it?' And I'll say, you know, '5:15,' and they'll say, 'Hey! Made you talk!' And that's merely a way of saying, 'I know your work and I like you.'"
"People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks."
"I believe in art."
"Given my absolute druthers, I would certainly like to see that every part of my body is used for spare parts for science."
"Neuroscientists are novices at deception."
"Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years."
"Magic's about understanding - and then manipulating - how viewers digest the sensory information."
"When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable."
"People take reality for granted."
"Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple."
"Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology. If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful."
"I always assumed I'd spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters."
"In real life, the most important decision you ever make is, where does reality leave off and make-believe begin? If you make a mistake about that, you're dead. You know, you're out on the street corner. You think there's no bus coming. You step out, you're dead."
