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

I do a lot of research on what people have done in the past.

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've always liked artists like Chris Burden, who would take performances, put them in galleries, and then do things that were on the edge.

I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.

When people ask, 'What role are you dying to play?' I always say, 'The one being written for me right now.'

If my fans want to do something for me when that time comes, I say, don't waste your money on me. Help the homeless. Help the needy... people who don't have no food... Instead of some big funeral, where they come from here and there and all over. Save it.

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.