Derren Brown Quotes

Performing the magic, for me, is not about convincing anyone I have amazing abilities. It’s about providing a journey which comes to a place where the brain starts spinning. And of course, the best brains spin the most.

Well, it took me over two hours to find Frencesco’s keys which was disappointing but I did go to Venice for free and I didn’t fall into the canal on the way home like a twat.

I am embarrassingly incompetent at football or any kind of team sport. I’m so bad it would anger you.

When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.

(When asked about the method for a trick where a member of the public answers a public pay-phone only to immediately slump to the floor as if asleep) I was saying ‘there’s fifty quid under the phone book. Just pretend. You’re on TV’.

Every day when you leave your home you give away more than you could ever imagine about who you are and what you do.

(speaking of Blackpool) Ah, I remember I used to come here as a child and it’s still really... shit, isn’t it, let’s be honest.

We are allowed to question people about their politics or ethics and expect them to defend their beliefs, or at least hold their own in any other important matter by recourse to evidence, yet somehow on the massive subject of God and how he might have us behave, all rational discussion must stop the moment we hear 'I believe'.

Walthamstow Stadium: Where hundreds of men, who all look like my dad, come to watch some thin dogs running around.

Some people believe that a person’s spirit is captured when they are photographed. I invite those of you who don’t believe that to take a photograph of someone you love a stab it repeatedly with a pair of scissors. Maybe they do capture something of the soul.

There are three things I noticed about being thirty-three: Failing memory, hair loss and failing memory.

In 1883 a relatively unknown Italian magician and alchemist called Alessandro Donnini chose the streets of Venice for an incredible treasure hunt. He asked the count Giovanni Francesco to hide a necklace anywhere in the district of San Marco, and Alessandro's task was to find it. All of Venice was invited to watch and place their bets as to whether or not he could do it. Alessandro used a method called muscle reading. He had the count hold on to his wrist and felt for any tiny unconscious clues, as to which way to go. He found the necklace in just over an hour and a half. It was a triumph, and all the townsfolk went fucking mental.

A lot of the justification psychics give is that ‘well, it comforts people’ and my feeling on that is, well, if they’re lies, who are you to decide that your lies are what people need to hear to comfort them. I think it’s a twisted logic. And I think that the reasons... if you’ve lost somebody dear to you and I’m trampling all over those memories telling you that they’re here now saying this and that, that’s none of my business. And if I’m just doing it because I can earn some money out of it... and when you watch these people at work so much of it is ego. Some of mediums at these spiritualist churches – especially the ones that aren’t so good – they just look like second rate stage hypnotists that you might see in a pub in Corfu. It’s horrendous. That I find really quite ugly.

All of us can be influenced through psychological techniques. For example, if I say “don’t think of a black cat” what do you do? You think of a black cat because the command ‘think of a black cat’ was there in the sentence. Techniques like this can be used to influence people’s thoughts, behaviour, even their memory.

I hated sports at school and hated my sports teachers. Still do in fact - especially Mr Broomfield. He remains an insult to retarded, overbearing megalomaniacs to this day.