I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just... interested.

I think the toughest thing about being an actor in a film is to be with a director who doesn’t know what they want. And that can be really, really frustrating.

I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That’s the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It’s certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.

I’m probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.

That’s one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I’m very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.

Unlike other Jewish families, we didn’t go out for Chinese food on Sundays, but we spent our time in a world of baking powder biscuits and the best shrimp cocktails that ever were.

Theft annoys me more than anything else. The purloining of effects from another magician. Some people think it’s massive to steal the secrets of nuclear reactors, but to steal a card move is trivial. They’re wrong.

Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn’t get easier. It just doesn’t.

I certainly was performing before my writing was published, because I was performing when I was very young. And the thing is I’m very comfortable on stage, so a large portion of my act did come from ad-libs.

Every acting gig isn’t the same, every writing job isn’t the same, every live performance isn’t the same – the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.