Houdini Quotes

• 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.

  Penn Jillette

  Ideas, Intellectual, Culture

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• There's something about the Houdini act that is not always made clear - about the escape act in general.

  James Randi

  Made, Clear

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• No one has the Houdini school of composition.

  Morton Feldman

  School, Composition

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• As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

  David Blaine

  Kids, Obsession, Obsessed

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. It was very freeing. I keep using that word "freeing" or "liberating." I feel like Houdini sometimes, like I'm just getting out of one set of shackles after another, hanging upside down inside a burlap bag with handcuffs on. Hopefully one day, I'm going to get out of this tank of water.

  Alison Bechdel

  Water, Important, One Day

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• They seal the subway change-booth guy up inside this thing with bullet-proof glass, closed in on all sides, it's like some kind of Houdini torture tank of doom. How do you breathe in there? It looks like if you put your hand over the change slot, you could suffocate him in thirty seconds.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Funny, Glasses, Hands

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• Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini.

  Paul Muldoon

  Way, Form

  The Irish Times, April 19, 2003.

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• I didn't really know much about the Houdinis when I started. As soon as they sent me the script, I wanted to find out everything I could about Bess. Luckily, I have a really wonderful friend named Michael Mitnick, who's a writer. He was a magician as a child, and that led him to the theater, which led to drama school, and he writes films now. Magic was really his thing, growing up, so he put me in touch with his magic teacher who is a real Houdini expert.

  Kristen Connolly

  Teacher, Children, Growing Up

  Source: collider.com

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• There were really a bunch of old, old magic hobbyists at the time, some of them who actually had known [Harry] Houdini. You had to be 14 to go to these meetings, and he snuck me in at 12. It was glorious.

  David Copperfield

  Magic, Bunch, Glorious

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In my work, there is a lot of storytelling. The storytelling is not a new thing. Back in the [Howard] Thurston days, the [Harry] Houdini days, the [Harry] Blackstone days, it was stories, but the stories were, "We're going to the Egyptian temples, and we're going to vanish the Prince of Thebes," and, "On my last trip to the Orient ..."

  Judd Apatow

  One Day, Stories, Lasts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In 1921, Harry Houdini started his own film company called - wait for it - the Houdini Picture Corporation.

  Kage Baker

  Waiting, Corporations, Film

  Kage Baker (2012). “Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Train Wrecks of the Silent Screen”, p.29, Tachyon Publications

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• In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.

  Michael Chabon

  Dream, New York, Book

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel”, p.15, Random House

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• It was just like a digital fixation with cards and math and science and then I started to look at images of great magicians from Houdini down the line.

  David Blaine

  Math, Magic, Cards

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I remember finding a Houdini book at the library and seeing an image of him chained on the side of a building. He looked so intense and scary, and I couldnt get that image out of my head. That started building up my love of magic.

  David Blaine

  Book, Building Up, Scary

  Interview with Adam Kimmel, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 27, 2010.

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• Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat

  Tommy Douglas

  Rabbits, Hats, Selling

  Tommy Douglas' remarks during a budget debate at the Saskatchewan Legislature, March 18, 1947.

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• I think if you would have cut Houdini with a knife, blood wouldn't come out, PR would.

  Criss Angel

  Cutting, Thinking, Blood

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• Escapology has one thing going for it that probably made Harry Houdini such a superstar in his day and a legend in the present. Everyone wants to escape from something. Taxes, contracts, illness, work, the multitude of burdens that we chafe under are shadows from which we want to escape.

  James Randi

  Magic, Shadow, Going For It

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• There was one moment, and it happened in school. I had a big final exam - we were supposed to write a 20-page report on this book about Houdini. I probably would have loved reading it, but I didn't, so I just decided to make a little super-8 movie based on it. I tied myself to the railroad tracks and all that. I mean, this is kid stuff, but it impressed the teacher, and I got an A. And that was maybe my first turning point, when I said, 'Yeah, I wouldn't mind being a filmmaker.'

  Tim Burton

  Teacher, Reading, Book

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To me, Clark Kent in a phone booth and Houdini in a packing crate, they were one and the same thing," he would learnedly expound at WonderCon or Angoulême or to the editor of The Comics Journal . "You weren't the same person when you came out as when you went in.

  Michael Chabon

  Phones, Editors, Packing

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel”, p.15, Random House

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• There were moments where I was being kicked in the stomach, and even though I had this brace on to protect me, I still had to prepare myself for it . You can't be relaxed when that's happening. You have to brace your muscles. I can remember thinking as it was about to happen "Wasn't that how Houdini died?" I think it was.

  Emily Mortimer

  Thinking, Remember, Moments

  Source: collider.com

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• I jog through the halls and then go upstairs to Jane’s locker and carefully slip the note I wrote last night through the vent: To: The Locker Houdini From: Will Grayson Re: An Expert in the Field of Good Boyfriends? Dear Jane, Just so you know: e. e. cummings cheated on both of his wives. With prostitutes. Yours, Will Grayson

  John Green

  Night, Wife, Experts

  John Green, David Levithan (2010). “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, p.88, Penguin

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• Houdini, the magician who debunked magic, could not bear to see the great rationalist [Arthur Conan] Doyle enchanted by ghosts and frauds. And so he did what any friend would: He set out to prove spiritualism false and rob his friend Doyle of the only comforting fiction that was keeping him sane. It was the least he could do.

  John Hodgman

  Comforting, Magic, Fiction

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• To label Jason Randal a magician does a disservice. You'll think the laws of physics, nature, the universe itself have been suspended. He's as good as Houdini was at his best!

  David Letterman

  Thinking, Law, Doe

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• One of my inspirations, Harry Houdini, remains an icon of the art because he defied our primal fears. His demonstrations in the early 20th century, especially his escape from the Chinese water torture cell, represented triumph over suffocation, drowning, disorientation and helplessness.

  Criss Angel

  Art, Inspiration, Cells

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• It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.

  Boris Johnson

  Wall, Trying, Piglet

  "The BBC was doing its job – bring back Gilligan". www.telegraph.co.uk. January 30, 2004.

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