Michael Carbonaro Quotes

My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid – his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

I’ve always performed magic as a kid.

I might be ‘Candid Camera’s number one fan.

I love acting on television and look forward to more roles, for sure. And I also love and need to perform live shows.

I say ‘incantation’ a lot, when what I really mean ‘incarnation.’ It’s a programmed mistake.

There’s magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D printers are magical. So I feel that as a magician, if I can pull off something that seems real and convincing enough that I can explain why it’s happening and have people believe it, it really is fascinating. And funny.

David Blaine, I think, was the first TV magician to really turn the camera around and make it about the spectator‘s experience. That’s really what magic is all about.

People are really willing to believe in impossible things, which is really beautiful.

I’m doing everything I can to take the magician out of the equation of magic.

I went to NYU completely with the idea I wanted to be the next David Copperfield.

Magic is really performing special effects live.

I’ll order anything that has the word ‘fig‘ or ‘crusted’ in the menu description.

I don’t want to be ‘the magician’; I want to be an innocent bystander along with the magical moment.

My goal is to get people to really believe that the impossible is real, and not that I’m responsible for it. I want them to believe that they’re having the most unusual, magical and bizarre days of their lives.

A lot of people have experimented with hidden cameras and magic before. What I do, which I think is different from any other style of prank or hidden camera, is that it’s all fun. It’s back to that kind of fun that ‘Candid Camera’ was. It’s not mean-spirited at all. It’s a joyful kind of play with people.

The goal is to really blur the line. Can you perform a magic trick in a way that someone doesn’t think it’s a magic trick but is something amazing they haven‘t seen before? Then they have to wrestle with reality.

I first started doing hidden-camera segments on ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.’ He was the coolest guy in the world to work for because he understands the creative process, and he had total trust. And he just let me make up whatever I wanted; I experimented and tried and played. We had a lot of fun over there.

I found that if I stack the moments correctly, people will believe in the most outrageous things.