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

Derren Brown

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Derren Brown
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: February 27
Actor
Artist
Film Producer
Hypnotist
Illusionist
Magician
Painter
Screenwriter
Television Presenter
Writer
Efficient
Bringing
Qualities
Least
Quality
Desire
Impressive
Means
Mean
Impress

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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
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Magic is not inherently anything. It is what you sell it as.
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...there is a fine line between wishing to produce child-like astonishment and treating people like infants.
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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.
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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.
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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
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I would like a bit of me - that’s how I put my back out!
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Liberating but hard to remember we're just bit-parts in the lives of people we know, who care very little for our secrets
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Seems the seance has become the most complained-about show. It received 700 complaints. I might add that the prospect of me blowing my head off on live TV last year attracted only twenty. Fair enough, I suppose.
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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.
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The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.
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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.
Derren Brown
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Few kids seek to learn a skill specifically designed to impress people unless they feel less than impressive themselves.
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We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.
Derren Brown