Ricky Jay quotes

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. (Ricky Jay)

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

Ricky Jay

I love amazing people. I love dazzling them. That's why I think performing magic is one of the greatest things a person can do.

Ricky Jay

One of the best sleight-of-hand guys I know is a plumber.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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

Ricky Jay

In the winters, I enrolled in the hotel management program at Cornell University. I naively thought that I knew something about sleight-of-hand, entertainment and food, and that would be all I needed.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

I know absolutely nothing about the 20th Century.

Ricky Jay

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion. (Ricky Jay)

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

Ricky Jay

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

Ricky Jay

I always read what I write out loud, and I did that long before any radio thing. My editor finds that unusual.

Ricky Jay

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

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.

Ricky Jay

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. (Ricky Jay)

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

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay

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.

Ricky Jay