Zitat des Tages von Penn Jillette:
I never wanted to be a magician. I never wanted to be a comedian. I never wanted to be onstage.
The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.
There's no job in show business that's harder than any other job outside show business.
If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn't have stumbled my way through 'Dancing with the Stars.'
We aren't people who believe that just because we're performers our opinions on everything need to be known.
You can't allow people freedom and then change your mind when the things don't go your way.
I'm an amazing mama's boy.
The one kind of person I have a lot of trouble understanding is the kind of person that says the existence of God or religion doesn't matter, it's not an important decision. I think it's vitally important; it's what all our lives are based on.
Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really, really hard to get really, really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.
You should think about the world and feel about your heart.
If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won't be around drugs and alcohol at all.
The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored.
The medium is not the message - the message is the message.
The fact is that violence gives you a rush.
'Moxie' is a name that was created by an American for the first national soft drink and then went on to mean chutzpah, and that's nice.
I do believe that a belief in God is crazy, but that doesn't mean that the people who believe in it are crazy. Those are two different things. Ideas can be stupid and crazy, and the people who hold those ideas are not necessarily stupid and crazy.
There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about.
It wasn't success, because Teller and I, by the time Asparagus Valley got together - within a year, we had achieved all our goals. I mean, our goal was to earn our living doing exactly what we wanted. Which is many people's goal.
In my run-ins with Christians... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.
Bob Barr is not crazy enough for my taste.
In my private life, I'm not around any drugs or alcohol.
We know what racist people look like. They don't deny it. They just don't!
Trey Parker did 'Book of Mormon.' It's the best Broadway show I've ever seen. He does 'South Park.' It's wonderful.
Building a professional relationship on respect as opposed to affection is a very good idea. Running your art projects the way you'd run a dry-cleaning business is also a really good idea. You shouldn't go into work like you're going on a date, like you're hanging out with friends.
I love when violent, dangerous art is done by people who are not violent and dangerous. I love that when George Romero was making 'Dawn of the Dead,' he was coaching his son's little league team.
If you want to turn out an atheist child, unconditional love constantly is a good way to do it.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty.
I've never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
I believe in individual rights so much that I don't like any sort of 'what's good for the cause'-type questions.
I don't want anyone as president who promises to take care of me. I may be stupid, but I want a chance to try to be a grown-up and take care of my family.
Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart.
I'm not misunderstood. I am brash. I make my living being brash.
There are performers who have built their whole career doing magic on TV and can't really perform live at all - don't really have jobs and skills.
But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen.
I started out as a juggler, so I know what it means to spend eight hours a day, seven days a week practicing something that people just dismiss with a wave of hand.