Ricky Jay Quotes

The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.

For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.

Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects.

The book says we may be through with the past but the past ain't through with us.

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.

I love amazing people. I love dazzling them. That's why I think performing magic is one of the greatest things a person can do.

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

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.

If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That's the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It's certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.

I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I'm very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.

I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just interested.

Magic is a powerful art that can support a weak performer.

I grew up like Athena — covered with playing cards instead of armor — and, at the age of seven, materialized on a TV show, doing magic.

I like being fooled. When I watch someone who does sleight-of-hand and fools me, it's a great feeling.

It probably is harder to fool people when they know they're going to be fooled.

There are people who try to figure things out. Often, magic is presented in a way that sets up a challenge that I actually find kind of appalling. You know, "I'm clever, I can do something, and you don't know what it is." And that instills in the audience the idea that, "Yes, I do. You're not that clever."

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.

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.

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

Theft annoys me more than anything else. The purloining of effects from another magician. Some people think it's massive to steal the secrets of nuclear reactors, but to steal a card move is trivial. They're wrong.

I know absolutely nothing about the 20th Century.

Maybe the the luxury of not having acting be my only profession is that I can be more selective about what I choose to be in. I've been really lucky in terms of film projects with people, terrific actors and also writers and directors that I really respect.

Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.

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.

I think a lot of people just assumed I came to L.A. to do more television and get into show business.

Unlike other Jewish families, we didn't go out for Chinese food on Sundays, but we spent our time in a world of baking powder biscuits and the best shrimp cocktails that ever were.

I'm pretty fortunate that I'm in the films I'm in largely because the directors have asked me to be in them. I'd love to do more of them, but the writing and historical stuff I'll probably always do.

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.

I think the toughest thing about being an actor in a film is to be with a director who doesn't know what they want. And that can be really, really frustrating.

Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn't get easier. It just doesn't.

I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical.

I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.