Quotes About Illusion

Puppets seem like vampires sometimes. They live, and you're depleted.

It was fun while it lasted, but it never seemed real to me. I could not believe I was in Van Halen.

I'm a big Penn & Teller fan. But I myself was never very good; I was a teenage magician who performed at kids' parties. I can still perform a vanish, credibly, and I still, in special circumstances, will make a balloon animal.

Scare answers to scare, and force begets force, until at length it comes to be seen that we are racing one against another after a phantom security which continually vanishes as we approach.

I want to ride my motorcycle up the side of the Luxor to the light and vanish.

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.'

I think there's a huge amount of magic on television, which is slightly vapid: there's no real meaning or message behind it; it is simply a trick.

We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in reality occurs. We have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present - deja vu.

When you have a star, he becomes the focus of a variety show, and he has to take himself seriously. But with Super Dave, it's all phony anyway.

What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

You have started the book with this bubble over your head that contains a cathedral full of fire - that contains a novel so vast and great and penetrating and bright and dark that it will put all other novels ever written to shame. And then, as you get towards the end, you begin to realise, no, it's just this book.

There is a vast difference between how things seem from the outside and how they feel on the inside.

The fact that television and tourism have made the whole world accessible has created the illusion that we enjoy intimate knowledge of other places, when we barely scratch their surface. For the vast majority, the knowledge of Thailand or Sri Lanka acquired through tourism consists of little more than the whereabouts of the beach.

The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

Aye aye, I'm not one of these people that hate Christmas. Some people think it's all fake, but I like that kind of thing. It's like Las Vegas. I know this isnae really the Eiffel Tower and that isnae really the Statue of Liberty, but it's just a bit of fun.

Most people think of Las Vegas, and they think of extravagance. But it's really a mix between fantasy and laziness.

Las vegas shouldn't exist. The incongruity hits you from the moment you first glimpse it from the airplane. First mountains, then desert, then neat squares of identical houses that look as if they were plucked straight from Monopoly.

I like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas more than the actual one.

One day, I saw a magic show, and I was like, 'I have to learn how to do this!' Every time I went to Las Vegas, I had to get at least two or three tricks from the magic shops.

Las Vegas is about distraction.

To me, 'X Factor' is like Vegas. Fake, twisted, but kind of wonderful. Maybe I'm sick, but I find the whole thing quite funny sometimes.

I don't think anyone leaves Las Vegas rejuvenated, their skin shining, their bank accounts glowing. No one leaves Vegas, like, 'I didn't make one mistake. That felt great. Back to work.'