Quotes from Derren Victor Brown

Some people like to talk of intuition as a way of knowing truth; that gut reactions are as good as evidence based facts. Its a really silly way of thinking...

How many powerful memories are triggered by smell and taste? Your mothers old perfume, the smell your fathers breath, the taste of the soap theyd make you eat.

The appreciation of a painting or a piece of music, for example, or even falling in love, is all about our subjectivity. But to decide that the entire universe operates in such a way, let alone to go to war because we are so convinced we are right that others must agree with us or die, that surely should demand a higher level of argument than 'It's true because I really, really feel it is.

There are three things I noticed about being thirty-three: Failing memory, hair loss and failing memory.

If you approach any psychic with any sort of scepticism youll see through pretty much all of it unless they happen to get lucky.

Animals can also be hypnotised. Flip a rabbit on its back, hold it firmly in position with its head back for a couple of minutes, and youll find it will become perfectly motionless and unresponsive, until you clap your hands loudly above its head.

We form many of our political opinions through reading papers and unconsciously absorbing the rhetoric of the journalists. Later, we spout the same opinions as our own. This parallels the way we respond to any authority and its something politicians understand well.

This is the makeup process. Ive been here since half past five this morning. So would you say youre bringing out a beauty thats already there? How does it work? How do we hide the bald patch?

Some people believe that a persons spirit is captured when they are photographed. I invite those of you who dont believe that to take a photograph of someone you love a stab it repeatedly with a pair of scissors. Maybe they do capture something of the soul.

Performing the magic, for me, is not about convincing anyone I have amazing abilities. Its about providing a journey which comes to a place where the brain starts spinning. And of course, the best brains spin the most.

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.

Jean-Eugne Robert-Houdin, the extraordinary father of modern conjuring, made the salient point that a magician is an actor playing the part of a magician. This is a very good description. However, an actor takes for granted how to create drama in every word, movement and look. The average magician is barely aware of its existence.

Canterbury Cathedral: The first ever pocket watch was found in the walls of its cloister many hundreds of years ago. I decided to come, in the rain, to play with the locals and, if time permitted, attend the evening service.

In Victorian criminology there was an enthusiasm for spotting criminal tendencies in a persons features.

One area which shows how unknowingly predictable we are, is the way we decorate our houses. We all feel we make unique and distinct choices, yet we all conform to a cultural standard.

We all get stuck in our belief systems, however sensible we think they are. To me, the New Age community is particularly guilty of not testing or challenging what it claims.

Some athletes use the mind to try and improve stamina and strength. Can I use my mind to take it away?

My techniques are concerned with reading signals from people, tiny unconscious clues that betray their thoughts. I tend to see it like a game...

One of the reasons I enjoy going to the Opera is the spectacle of an audience enraptured. Their emotions are engaged, their passions brought to the fore, they become highly sensitive.

If you concern yourself with telling or showing people how interesting you are, you will at best provoke a temporary response of polite interest until even that gives way to annoyance. If you let people find it out for themselves, you become a real source of fascination.

We are allowed to question people about their politics or ethics and expect them to defend their beliefs, or at least hold their own in any other important matter by recourse to evidence, yet somehow on the massive subject of God and how he might have us behave, all rational discussion must stop the moment we hear 'I believe'.

I decided that my magic had to change. That I had to give serious thought to presentation. That, in fact, my presentation of the effects is where my impact as a magician lies I realised that it can turn a good effect into something artistic and stunning.

From psychics to spiritualists to palm readers to graphologists to astrologists, the expert in question either just simply deluded and naive or theyre using a skill called cold-reading.

Now for Heavens sake go to bed. Dont worry about how it was done just go straight to bed. Leave the washing-up and get into bed fully clothed. If any of you want to know how any of it was done, please feel free to write in to me at my home address which will come up on the screen in a moment and I will give you a full and honest explanation of anything you may ask.