Top 128 Quotes & Sayings by Derren Brown - Page 2

Guilt's too strong a word, but there is this niggling worry that I'm a grown-up doing a childish job and it would be nice to do something more useful and to reach a number of people with an idea you think is important.

You have to realise that hypnosis doesn't exist: it just works on people's natural suggestibility, their expectations and capacity to unconsciously role play. You can't make someone do anything they don't want to do.

In recent years there's been a lot of philosophical theorising about how important magic is, and how it takes us back to a childlike state of astonishment. I think all this is just nonsense. Magic isn't meaningful or important other than how you're performing it in that moment.

That was how I started, as a hypnotist. But I didn't like the kind of gigs I was being offered. I didn't want to embarrass people.

The Stoics appear during a huge time of constant wars and real political strife. And it became very popular, I think, because it's a way of distancing yourself from strife and keeping your centre of gravity within you.

There was something about me even at an early age that enjoyed charming and manipulating.

I once had Rachel McAdams over for lunch, when she was with Michael Sheen, who's a friend of mine.

It used to frustrate me when I'd get celebrities on my shows and I had to meet them as this ludicrous magician character rather than as myself.

Most people's fear of being in front of an audience can generally be conquered by being completely on top of what it is they've got to do.

When I was at University I had a sort of fear about going to the gym and that kind of blokeish environment, which was rooted in a feeling of total inadequacy, which is what fear is.

I don't like big spiders in the house.

Clearly if a hypnotist could make someone to steal £100k just by telling them to, the world would be a different place, and I suspect that hypnotists wouldn't bother doing shows in pubs or dodgy Spanish holiday resorts.

I never really enjoy the thought of fancy dress.

I am a movie geek, yes!

I really do like being on stage. Compared to television I have a lot more control - it's a lot more relaxed and loose.

I'm finally having my TV removed and replaced by a tropical fish tank, which I hope will provide more interesting viewing.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

When I started doing magic I was quite obsessive about it. I didn't feel impressive and I had a strong desire to impress people. I was putting all my creative energy into learning and performing tricks, and it helps if you're not in relationships or doing the stuff other people are doing. But it's not necessarily a healthy way of living.

Magic, whether it's mind magic or conjuring, is about the cheapest and quickest way of impressing people, and I think if you don't grow out of that as a magician then it shows, and people get a bit sick of that after a while, because it starts to feel like posturing. So I grew out of it.

Since turning 40 I happily moisturise - I have what's called a regime - but I'm always in two minds because I have no idea if I'm completely wasting my money. They feel nice when they are on but I can't stop wondering, 'Am I succumbing to the same nonsense I try to fight against in other areas?'

If something's stressful I've always tended to just find ways of avoiding it rather than rising to meet it or try to change it.

As a performer you often feel that you're the child and everyone else is a grown-up.

For a long time, I couldn't just sit and have a conversation with people at a table without showing them a trick. I thought you just had to impress, it was about impressing, which of course is what you do if you don't feel very impressive.

I never quite know how to describe what I do. I normally just say, 'Oh, I'm a magician', which probably puts fairly naff ideas in people's minds but is pleasantly conversation-stopping.

When touring I get to travel around with my best friends, do a show I love and I'm confident people will enjoy, and have all the adrenalin that comes with performing.

The process of coming out is normally very disappointing. It's not that people react badly to it - they really don't care.

I don't want to be some extreme therapist. Although seeing someone's life change for the better is a really moving thing.

Everything you do is about creating an experience in the viewer's head. If you're rude or irritating as a performer, then your magic is irritating.

I have a couple of dogs and I live with my partner. We just like to sit and read and I'm generally quite quiet.

A lot of unconfident kids do tricks because it's the quickest route to impressing people. You can stand behind something amazing and people think you're amazing.

Mentalist is the technical term for what I do and it covers everything from psychic medium through Uri Geller, through to magicians doing tricks with a mental theme.

I'm not very sociable. If I get invited to a glamorous event I probably won't go. That world does not really appeal to me.

I came across the idea of running towards the things that frighten you. Once you go and do it, you realise that the fear of it is far more powerful than actually doing it.

I really liked 'Heist,' and that seems to be a popular favourite, but I think my personal favourite was 'Hero at 30,000 ft,' about the guy who ended up landing the aeroplane.

Magic should get under people's skins.

I'm probably a little shyer than people imagine.

Yes, I've had a slight feeling of wanting to reclaim some of the lifestyle I had in my 20s, which means poncing around in what amounts to pirate clothes.

Psychic, illusionist... I'm just doing the things that I find interesting and worthwhile.

I love touring, more than anything. Doing the stage show is a more enjoyable process than TV. There are no safeguards but the payoff is the wow factor.

I wore a cloak for many years, I had long hair, I may have had a drop earring for a week and I fancied myself as a philosopher poet but was somewhere more in the gay female leisure pirate.

Whereas non-scientific (and potentially dangerous) thinking starts with a premise and then looks for things that support it, scientific thinking constantly tries to disprove itself. That alone makes all the difference in the world.

Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practise anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.

Few kids seek to learn a skill specifically designed to impress people unless they feel less than impressive themselves.

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

The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

Magic is a performance, and a performance should have an honesty, a relevance and a resonance if it is to be offered to spectators without insulting them.

I am often dishonest in my techniques ... I happily admit to cheating, it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't

Have your cake and eat it... there's no other reason to have a cake

Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.

To impress people as much as we would wish, we would first need to successfully adopt each of their value systems

We forget our health and comfort and notice a pinching shoe. Much of living well is detaching from our boring stories of pain and shifting focus

The desire to impress is an efficient means of bringing out one’s least impressive qualities.

Magic is not inherently anything. It is what you sell it as.

When [the magician] clicks his fingers and cards change to the four aces, we know we have experienced sleight of hand. Real magic would not be quite that quick and easy. Real magic would take investment. Real magic would draw you in, and make you nervous.

We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.

...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.

There are things in your life which you are in control of, and those you're not. You need to not care about those things which you're not in control of, and when you come to really understand that, you can go from being really upset about something to that lovely feeling of being a kid where everything is okay.

A lot of unconfident kids do tricks because it's the quickest route to impressing people," he explains. "You can stand behind something amazing and people think you're amazing.

Booking an act for my Dad's 70th birthday, I wanted a great act and went straight to John Archer- his reputation in the magic world is among the very best. I was so pleased he was able to do it, and he absolutely brought the house down. It was brilliant, hysterically funny, and perfectly pitched for the occasion. He made the evening. I'd recommend him unreservedly.

I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.