For me, I live for performing live because people look at magicians on television, and they always wonder, 'Is it a camera trick?' 'Is it a stooge?' whereas, live, they know there's no set-ups; there's no stooges.

I remember hearing Will Smith, back when he was just a rapper, saying, 'When all the other rap stars are in bed, I'm practicing my rapping.' I try to be like that. There is always something to improve.

I want to bring magic back to where it started, which is not about the props, and it's not about me as a magician: it's about the audience and playing with their minds and playing with their perception of magic and having fun with it.

There's a lot of different styles of hypnosis. There's conversational hypnosis, which, even though we joke about it, politicians use conversational hypnosis. I've been hired back at home in Ireland by certain politicians to assist them in specific language patterns that will just tip people over into their, you know, into their zone.

On stage, you're not limited at all because you're free in language: language is the source of the imagination. You can travel farther in language than you can in any film.

In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

At the School of Visual Arts in New York, you can get your degree in Net art, which is really a fantastic way of thinking of theater in new ways.