The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.

One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality.

Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but people can see your lips moving.

You get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

If you are doing something for reward or punishment, you do not have morality.

In music, if you hit a wrong note, people forgive you. In magic when something goes wrong, the entire art is destroyed.

I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil.

Much better than the feeling of having things is the feeling of having earned things.

Better to be uneducated than educated by your government.

Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality.

Who can tell when troubles may come?

If you are not hungry for success, you will not make the best use of your time. It is simple and clear. People who are truly hungry for food never play with a meal when they see it.

Evil was predictable, always painfully expected.

Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.

The herd instinct is the new chic! It's like belonging to a club!

I don't think the problem that we have today is overzealous believers. I think the problem we have is underzealous believers.

Reagan "has conducted an arms race on earth," boomed Mondale. A race generally implies two parties. The Soviets contributed a little bit to this problem, if Mondale had not noticed.

I was good at digging holes. It was the rest of life I sucked at.

My voice as a filmmaker is always about boys searching for their fathers. And not only boys, but all children looking for those figures in their lives.

Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.