“One thing you learn doing magic tricks for a living is how close every...” — Penn Jillette Quote

One thing you learn doing magic tricks for a living is how close every performance of every magic trick is to disaster. There are no robust magic tricks. They're all hanging from a thread - sometimes literally.

I didn't learn fire-eating to conquer my fears. I learned fire-eating because I desperately wanted to be in show business.

People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.

You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.

Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.

If the film is a hit then everyone shares the success. If it is going to be a disaster then it might as well be because of me, not because of somebody else.

To me, the idea that any kind of disaster helps create a nation seems a ridiculous one. There was no family in the house on the land next to me, and there might have been.

Once there was this Telugu film about a ghost. It sounded too hackneyed. 'Probably it will turn out fine,' I told myself and went ahead and... it was a disaster.

Launching a start-up, you need to get a lot done quickly. Every day is different. Everyone pitches in with everything. It's easy for the founding team to say, 'We're flexible. We all help out with everything!' But when it comes to making decisions - that flexibility can spell inefficiency and disaster.