Ricky Jay

“My father was the Formica King of Long Island, and my mother was the daughter of a Bengal Lancer in India.”

“For the most part, magic secrets are available on a level that's overwhelming and frightening, and they are very accessible if you do the tiniest bit of digging. But, that said, there's a certain group of individuals, in which I am included, who are very tight about secrets and don't share them with anyone.”

“I wasn't obsessed by magic. People say, 'How you can you claim you practiced eight hours a day and weren't obsessed?' Well, people go to a job they don't even like for eight hours a day; it's not obsessive if it's something you like.”

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

“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.”

“The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.”

“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.”

“I grew up like Athena - covered with playing cards instead of armor - and, at the age of seven, materialized on a TV show, doing magic.”

“I know absolutely nothing about the 20th Century.”

“To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.”

“For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic that's entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well.”

“Like every art form, there are jealousies and angers and competitiveness in magic. But there's camaraderie among magicians, whether you perform it for a living or you're an enthusiast.”

“I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical.”

“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 don't know what first got me to attack melons. It's not like I ate a bad one and got an upset stomach. It just eventually seemed like the appropriate fruit.”

“Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.”

“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.”

“I think a lot of people just assumed I came to L.A. to do more television and get into show business.”

“I do think deception... There's something kind of odd about tricking people for a living, but ultimately, it's a remarkably honest profession, when you think about it. If you violate that code, and you say you're not using camera tricks, and then you do, I actually think that's a kind of serious moral issue.”

“Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects.”