Derren Brown Quotes

Magicians will always tell you the trick is the most important thing, but I'm more interested in telling a story.

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.

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.

That's a wonderful thing, because one of the primary qualities of a good performance is honesty.

One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.

Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.

But the whole idea of the transformation... mystery, transformation, and manipulations - those were the things that Marcel was a magician at. That's his magic.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.

I've always loved magic.

I never deal in transformations, for they are not honest, and no respectable sorceress likes to make things appear to be what they are not.

I always say that I love magic but I hate magicians. I like being fooled. If you wave your hands in front of my face and I think you're doing a trick, I'm easily impressed. If you pull a quarter out of my ear, I'm quite certain you're a wizard. But I don't like the way most magicians don't act like they're magical; they act like show business dicks.

If one must explain a magic trick, one should do so after the show is over.

My overall responsibility is to be truthful. If people pay money to come and see me, looking for something other than that, then they've made a mistake.

You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognizes something about themselves or they don't -- You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking that was nice...now where's the cab?'

If you go to a magic show, you don't want to see logic.

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

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

What I've tried to do in my stage magic is to take a trick and give it an emotional hook.

Magic and new technology have always walked hand in hand - even back in the days of Robert Houdin.

I think you have a pact with an audience in every picture, and I think the pact is to try and be truthful and to be real.

What is the thing that Hollywood demands most? Sincerity. No place in the world will pay such a high price for this admirable trait.

In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.

Magic, historically, has been a man doing tricks with no wider story behind it.

I think little things are more powerful because they're more honest, so people feel them more strongly.