Derren Brown Quotes

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

Derren Brown

#2. Liberating but hard to remember we're just bit-parts in the lives of people we know, who care very little for our secrets

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

#5. 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.

Derren Brown

#6. 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.

Derren Brown

#7. 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.

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

#9. I control the conditions so my testers become my testees.

Derren Brown

#10. We're terrible at realising what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.

Derren Brown

#11. Our fascination with weather: its caprices and changes as an antidote to the eternal repetition of daily life; a helpful illusion of novelty

Derren Brown

#12. 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.

Derren Brown

#13. Magic is not inherently anything. It is what you sell it as.

Derren Brown

#14. 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.

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

#16. 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

#17. 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.

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

#19. 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.

Derren Brown

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

Derren Brown

#21. 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.

Derren Brown

#22. 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

Derren Brown

#23. 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.

Derren Brown

#24. 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

Derren Brown

#25. The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

Derren Brown