Robert Gottlieb Quotes

One of my inspirations, Harry Houdini, remains an icon of the art because he defied our primal fears. His demonstrations in the early 20th century, especially his escape from the Chinese water torture cell, represented triumph over suffocation, drowning, disorientation and helplessness.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.

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.

All David Blaine is is a good-looking magician.

I think if you would have cut Houdini with a knife, blood wouldn't come out, PR would.

Mr. Norrell is like a librarian trying to do magic... That's the story of my career, really. I stand next to good looking men and make them look better!

A clever conjurer is welcome anywhere, and those of us whose powers of entertainment are limited to the setting of booby-traps or the arranging of apple-pie beds must view with envy the much greater tribute of laughter and applause which is the lot of the prestidigitator with some natural gift for legerdemain.

Drew was a director, and I'm a magician.

I always wanted to do magic tricks - I feel like that could be the the next wave.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

I'm the luckiest man in the world - performing 500 shows a year and loving what I do - illusion IS my day to day life.

I'm friends with Criss Angel. Criss has offered me a million times to go downstairs and see the setup. I don't want to see it. I just want to go, 'God, how did you do that?'

I don't put a girl in a box and clap my hands three times, and she's gone. I get in the box, and I vanish, and I reappear at the other side of the stage. That way, people don't think, 'That's a great illusion.' They think, 'Doug's a great magician.'

Houdini connected to people on an emotional level so that when he would escape that straight jacket it wasn't about the straight jacket. It was about people looking at it and escaping poverty. When you have that it's the truest form of magic.

Growing up, yeah, I had a magic kit with learn tricks and learn card tricks, but I was never... I used to watch whatever magic special was on as a kid, but then, it's not that I lost interest, but to be a magician, you really, it's really hard work. Learning lines is hard enough; learning sleight of hand, that's real practice.

All types of magic performance have a purpose. Even if it's an amateur who's trying out slight of hand on YouTube.

There are performers who have built their whole career doing magic on TV and can't really perform live at all - don't really have jobs and skills.

In 1921, Harry Houdini started his own film company called - wait for it - the Houdini Picture Corporation.

I was considered a comedy magician. And - how do I put this without sounding egotistical? - it didn't take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn't do comedy or magic.

I'm no wizard, and I don't like being thought of in that light at all. I think of a wizard as being some sort of magician or something, doing something on the sly or something, and I don't want to be thought of in that way.

I went to NYU completely with the idea I wanted to be the next David Copperfield.

My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

Anyone can learn a trick, but to make it entertaining, to put a presentation twist on it, and then to take it out there and really amaze people is a whole different ball game. You have to have some kind of a natural ability to do that, I suppose.

We all enjoy a magic show, but we don't demand a Q&A afterward explaining how it was done.