People haven't even begun to tap into the potential of what the mind is possible of doing. We only use a certain percentage of our brains.

We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe.

Well, I also love magic, which is, you know, different than showmanship. Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder.

As a kid I used to hold my breath longer than anybody else, and then I heard stories about people accidently underwater for 45 minutes - how do you recover from that? It's not a miracle. Something allows us to survive.

I don't think you can say something is or isn't magic. That's what was cool about Houdini, because he was a magician who had a magic show, but he was also an escape artist, and they kind of, over time, blended together. They both kind of enhance each other, I think.

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 couldn't get that image out of my head. That started building up my love of magic.

I remember my mother had this deck of cards that her mother had given her and that she passed on to me. It was a gypsy tarot deck that I used to carry everywhere.

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.

When I was about 19, I shot a tape of me doing magic just to people on the streets, and I would edit together all the reactions and I kept pushing this idea, and then ABC came on board and made my first show.

Whether you're shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance.

Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder. And I was just intrigued with that idea.

My mother encouraged it so much. She was so supportive. Even if as a kid, I would do the dumbest trick, which now that I look back on some things, she would love it, she would say that's amazing, or if I'd make the ugliest drawing, she would hang it up. She was amazing.

But as they say about sharks, it's not the ones you see that you have to worry about, it's the ones you don't see.

I'd always wanted to do these types of things - pieces of magic I could put out not as illusions, but really doing it.

I just believe that the feeling of wonder is amazing. I am pushing myself as far as I can humanly push myself... I can only hope for the best and expect the worse.

I was obsessed with the idea of fasting and isolation.

In truth, the only restrictions on our capacity to astonish ourselves and each other are imposed by our own minds.

My only fear is the unknown.

As a kid, I always was obsessed with Houdini.

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn.