David Copperfield Quotations

Magic and new technology have always walked hand in hand - even back in the days of Robert Houdin.

Dreams are illusions, and we can't let go of them because we would be dead.

I brush my teeth with a Sonicare toothbrush before every show.

It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.

I find revealing the secrets of magic quite reprehensible.

It's really hard to think of one kind of magic as a favorite. I've been really fortunate in that I've been able to perform such a diverse range of things.

There is a safe spot within every tornado. My job is to find it.

I'm just waiting for people to start asking me to make the rain disappear.

Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.

You have to learn certain skills to present magic.

When you're a guy and meet a girl the first time, you do whatever it takes.

I try to help people realize their dreams by using magic to tell stories that educate, move, and inspire.

The key is for the audience never to know, so I have a plan B for every illusion.

I'm really trying hard not to do anything that has been done before. So knowing everything I can about the legacy of magic challenges my team and I to invent new illusions.

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

Demonic figures and occult themes have disappeared from modern magic.

For me to grow, I have to know about the foundation that came before.

For my father, being kind was natural... I have to really work at it. I love competing and winning, conquest - not words you usually associate with kindness.

I am fortunate to have the resources to have many methods to do each of my illusions.

I discovered something amazing, which has caused a lot of controversy - the fountain of youth. I have to keep it a secret!

In magic, it takes two or three years for me to create a 5-minute illusion for me to get it to the level I want.

The first trick I bought at Macy's was a little wooden board where a quarter would appear and disappear.

He encouraged me to make every illusion about my personal dreams and my personal nightmares. So I took that idea and made it about everyone else's dreams . . . It's very moving and very emotional.

The reaction was good until I wanted to make it a career. And they said, 'Well, maybe you shouldn't do that. They didn't know I could really make a living at this business. They were a little afraid. Because it was uncharted territory, really.

Normally, I do magic on the stage. But I can make magic credible and resonate through a TV screen.

Magicians are the people who began to use film as an illusion on stage.

To make magic credible on screen is always very difficult. The story is the most important thing. That is what should win. If sacrifices or compromises are made, it's usually for story. Story in magic is very, very important to me. That's what I've really championed through my career.

Magic is used in espionage, all the time, for clandestine things. I've got a whole library from a gentleman who was hired by the CIA to create magic technology for the use of anti-terrorism.

My job is to make people dream. Of course, there's a lot of technical stuff behind the scenes and a lot of hard work behind it, but I get to watch people see the result of that hard work and feel that wonder and feel that discovery, all the time.

All the lawyers and the business stuff is work, but actually creating stuff isn't work. It's good effort. It's hard work. But, it's not work. It doesn't feel like work because the result is very rewarding.

I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

I discovered Musha Cay and the islands around it in the Exumas.

Let sleeping dogs lie — who wants to rouse 'em?

No self-respecting gay guy would have ever made some of the hair and clothing choices I am still trying to live down.

But Vegas is really my first home.

My dreams are my dress rehearsals for my future.

What I've tried to do in my stage magic is to take a trick and give it an emotional hook.

The audiences are what keep me enthusiastic.

The audience likes to be taken on new journeys.

Physical rehab is often very, very hard work.

My show is constantly evolving... new tricks are added, old ones are dropped... so it stays fresh. But it's the randomly selected participants from the audience that make it fresh and provide some of the best comic relief.

I learned that there were two ways I could live my life: following my dreams or doing something else. Dreams aren't a matter of chance, but a matter of choice. When I dream, I believe I am rehearsing my future.

I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I dont know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted.

Magic has been something I've been really good at since I was really young. The ability has always come easy to me, I'm not sure why.

My uncle's house burned down when I was 6 years old. We got out safely. But ever since, I've had a nightmare of dying in a fire.

I will now make a scorpion appear in Osama bin Laden's pants

I have always been interested in pushing magic forward.

I need a form of escape even when I'm working really hard.

Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books

I was an only child. We were so poor, my parents and I had the same room.

I act like I'm 14, if you haven't figured that out yet.

But when I go off stage I don't have a deck of cards with me all the time.

If I was gay, why would I hide it?

It's okay for me to be gay, but God didn't make me that way.

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

The most important thing in life..

Never stop listening to your audience.

I really did sneak into Broadway shows, starting when I was 12.

You can feel better about yourself in a very short period of time depending on the kind of magic that you are doing.

We all possess the need to dream.

When I was a kid, people wanted to be an astronaut. Today, kids want to be famous, and that's totally the wrong approach. You have to have authenticity in what you're doing. You have to really care about the core message of what you're saying, and then everything else will fall into place.

No, I think marriage is a great thing.

From the very beginning, I studied acting, directing, lighting, dance and movement. I didn't rely on just the magic to take place. It's a shame that a lot of magicians just rely on the trick itself and they have no other abilities. They get away with the wonder factor, and I don't think that's enough. It's great, but it's not enough.

In movies, storytelling and every single art form, we're creating wonder. You're starting with a blank page and creating something that doesn't exist.

Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

Stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will'.

Marriage is like a formality for me.

When people say you can't do it - that it's impossible - never lose hope. Just because they couldn't doesn't mean you can't.

Before there can be wonders, there must be wonder.

Magic is the only profession where it's easy to lie about your talent. If you do a trick and you can learn it very quickly, you can fool somebody into thinking you're a great magician.

It wasn't just about doing tricks. It's about taking an audience to another place, a special place, so they can really suspend their disbelief. Its about amazing the audience as well as moving them.

The most important thing is presentation.

This whole show is about people's dreams, making them come true. The whole basis of it is, nobody dreams of pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Nobody dreams of vanishing the Statue of Liberty unless they're me, but . . . I'll do a whole piece about having your perfect dream car, making cars appear and motorcycles appear ? people dream about that. People dream about traveling, so I'll vanish somebody in the audience and make them appear on the beach in Hawaii during the show, with proof, with signatures, with Polaroid pictures, so they know it's happening in real time.

It's a program that uses magic as a form of therapy for people with disabilities, where magic is taught to patients in hospitals to help them regain their dexterity and their coordination by learning sleight of hand, in addition to boosting the patient's self-esteem by giving them a skill that an able-bodied person doesn't even have.

I like dealing with parents whose children have been arrested for the first time, ... It's one of the few times that one can make a difference, so I try to make the experience so terrifying that they never want to come back.