Quotes from Teller

Doing beautiful things is its own reward.

To most people who have a point of view, merely being on TV is an intrinsic good.

I'm more apt to cry at something beautiful than at something sad.

Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying.

People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.

The place we want to explore unpleasantness in the real world is in art.

I always assumed I'd spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters.

Generally, magicians don't know what to say, so they say stupid and redundant crap like, 'Here I am holding a red ball.'

Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team.

People take reality for granted.

Comedically, unpleasantness is great fun.

Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

The Boy Scouts of America is no longer entirely what people think it is. Essentially, it has been hijacked by religious conservatives.

Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples' lives.

As a kid, I was a Hitchcock lover; I cared about the dark side of things.

The silent thing onstage allows for a kind of intimacy that no conversation can have. If I just shut up, we're forced to look at each other and really confront that moment.

People come up to me on the street and make some little joke - like they'll say, 'Excuse me, sir, what time is it?' And I'll say, you know, '5:15,' and they'll say, 'Hey! Made you talk!' And that's merely a way of saying, 'I know your work and I like you.'

Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology. If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful.

Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.

Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.

Try that yourself sometime: Take something (or someone) you love, and -in your imagination- say goodbye forever right now. Grieve for a moment. Then feel the explosion of happiness that comes when you remind yourself you don't have to say goobye. At least, not yet.

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

Given my absolute druthers, I would certainly like to see that every part of my body is used for spare parts for science.