Illusionists Quotes

Liberating but hard to remember we're just bit-parts in the lives of people we know, who care very little for our secrets

I am an illusionist - that's why I create art.

All artists are illusionists of one kind or another.

All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.

An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham.

My Brain is the key that sets me free.

You don't get into magic. Magic gets into you.

We are all illusionists and that's why we are attracted to drag queens. This whole world is an illusion. It's not real.

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all.

Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.

A fundamental understanding of the human psyche is the essential key to successful magic.

The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man.

The hard must become habit. The habit must become easy. The easy must become beautiful.

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions–which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.