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I'd like to bring magic back to the place it used to be 100 years ago.

I think magic, whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple. It's practice, it's training, and it's - It's practice, it's training and experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.

As a kid I used to hold my breath longer than anybody else, and then I heard stories about people accidently underwater for 45 minutes - how do you recover from that? It's not a miracle. Something allows us to survive.

I think anybody can do any of these if they train. I don't recommend it, but anybody could do it if there was a need.

I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

I thought instead of burying myself under dirt, I'd bury myself under water so everybody could see that you're there.

I hope people remember me as a guy who brought magic to the people. You know, pushed the boundaries of wonder.

If I asked you to stand in one spot for 35 hours or a certain length of time, you could do it.

I consider myself a showman, and I love magic, and I love art, and I love performance, and they're all separate.

But as they say about sharks, it's not the ones you see that you have to worry about, it's the ones you don't see.

Whether you're shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance.

My mother encouraged it so much. She was so supportive. Even if as a kid, I would do the dumbest trick, which now that I look back on some things, she would love it, she would say that's amazing, or if I'd make the ugliest drawing, she would hang it up. She was amazing.

I do a lot of research on what people have done in the past.

In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds.

I have not had time to reflect on my own truths in many years.

I'd always wanted to do these types of things - pieces of magic I could put out not as illusions, but really doing it.

I remember finding a Houdini book at the library and seeing an image of him chained on the side of a building. He looked so intense and scary, and I couldn't get that image out of my head. That started building up my love of magic.

I think that when Evel Knievel crashed over the fountain at Caesar's, it kind of gave you a credibility and then anticipation for everything he did.

Well, I also love magic, which is, you know, different than showmanship. Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder.

I'd go to Coney Island to hang out, and I saw a magician doing a rope trick on the boardwalk. I was fascinated. I guess that's how it started.

I was obsessed with the idea of fasting and isolation.

I believe that fear of life brings a greater fear of death.

We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe.

I think everything I do is normal, not paranormal but normal. It's using the power of the mind to achieve whatever we can endure.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.