Derren Brown Quotes

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.

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.

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

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

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.

If someone does not have a specific charity they would like to donate to, that's OK. An undesignated donation would be split up evenly amongst all the charities supported by the Annapolis Area Complex.

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

I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.

I would like a bit of me - that's how I put my back out!

I'm a big fan of parrots - I think they're fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying.

Everything worthwhile in your life draws its meaning from the fact you will die.

I'd rather cut off my own balls with blunt bacon scissors than host a dinner party.

We might never rid ourselves of a lingering anxiety regarding our death; this is a kind of tax we pay in return for self-awareness.

When you start to build a serious wardrobe, the navy blazer is the very first piece you should choose. It can be a building block for an entire work and casual wardrobe.

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

The True Believer ignores anything that doesn't fit his belief system. Instead, he inevitably comes to hold those beliefs at a very profound level. They can become absolutely part of his identity. It is this that brings together the religious, the psychic, the cynic (as opposed to the open skeptic) and the narrow-minded of all kinds. It is something I encountered a lot among my fellow Christians. At one level it can be seen in the circular discussion which goes as follows:

Why do you believe in the bible?
Because it is Gods word.
And why do you believe in God?
Because of what it says in the bible.

At a less obvious level, it can be seen in the following common exchange:

Why do you believe Christianity is true?
Because I have the experience of a personal relationship with God.
So how do you know you're not fooling yourself?
Because i know it is real.

Even as an enthusiastic believer myself I could see this kind of tautology at work, and over time I realized that it is common to all forms of True Belief., regardless of the particular belief in question. The fact is, it's enormously difficult - and you need to be fantastically brave - to overcome the circularity of your own ideologies. But just because our identity might be tied up with what we believe, it doesn't make that belief any more correct. One wishes that True Believers of any sort would learn a little modesty in their convictions.

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.

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

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 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

We see the illusion of individual predilection being maintained, for example, in the array of different styles of iPhone cases available to us. We wonder which of the provided range of colourful or sophisticated sheaths best communicates to the world our unique character. Thus we lean towards the wood effect, or the Batman one (ironically sported, of course), or the vintage Union Jack. Meanwhile, it is much harder to honestly ask ourselves whether our lives would be improved were we not to be attached to our devices quite as umbilically, and how much misery they bring us alongside the various conveniences and amusements. Whether we might be more authentically ourselves if, with a pioneering and curious spirit, we occasionally left them at home. It

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

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

In magic we have a variety of "uses" for our art beyond magic itself, which reminds me of the notion of art therapy. The rendering of art inferior to therapy is an interesting one: interesting in the sense that it makes me want to vomit angrily.

If you do grow up feeling as though you don't quite fit in as a child, it's very easy to decide you're certain not going to fit in as an adult. You hang on to your eccentricities and hate the idea of conforming. It's a common pattern.