Quotes About Illusion

I actually think acting is a form of self-hypnosis. You have to be hyper, hyper aware of what's going on around you. You have to know where the lens is, what the shot is, and where you're moving. And then you have to trick yourself into an emotional state where you believe this stuff is actually happening.

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.

I do like to point out the trick putts, the ones that look like they go one way but actually go another. I think the audience likes to know when a putt looks like it's two inches outside left, but it's actually two inches outside right.

As an actor, I feel one should use his look to trick people.

Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.

If people are fans of 'Mindfreak,' they are going to be so excited with 'Believe.' They are actually going to see those illusions that people think can only happen with trick photography.

No Ponzi schemer tells anyone exactly how it works. The purpose of a Ponzi scheme is to trick people, to take the money and run.

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.

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

It's easy to trick yourself into thinking something's funnier than it is.

I went around in my teens and early 20s thinking that life was a con trick. I had managed to grow up believing in all sorts of romantic ideas about hard work and justice and truth, and it seemed the real world was much more complicated and shaded than I wanted to believe.

In Hollywood, you kind of trick yourself into feeling like you have impact.

When you go see a magic trick, the first thing you ask is, 'How do they do that.' That's what I hope the kids are saying when they leave the matches.

Stay away from national polls. They are always an illusion. They will always trick you into stupid political behavior.

I was a magician's assistant and had to go in the box that they put the swords through, and there's no trick to it. You literally have to dodge the swords.

Well you know, the big trick with 'Saw,' the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that - spoiler alert - the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.

The funny thing about 'The Naked Brothers Band' movie was that we tricked the audience into thinking that we were actually rock stars.

I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.

Movies are like magic tricks.

Because 'Gob' was a terrible magician, he was always, in great comedic moments, messing up his magic act. We used to have magicians come in to work on these tricks to actually get them wrong. But they still had to work. We had to bring magicians on to make magic not work.

Of course, in all magic tricks there's a secret.

I used to fly around the stage without strings or camera tricks. That took seven years to create.

The skills that we have are the actual magic skills - not the performing skills. We have to separate those. But the actual skills that make the tricks work, we don't get to use again.

When I graduated from college, I thought I was losing my hair. And I started looking into hair transplants. I was talking to my mom. My mom said, 'You're crazy. You have so much hair.' It was a real lesson in your mind playing tricks on you. You can make your mind think anything is happening.