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" At the zoo, people would gather around the railway to see the snakes being fed, and my brothers would walk around the group, taking from purses or bags or using a razor to cut pockets and take wallets. "

Apollo Robbins

Pockets

See

Group

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" I've taken a tenacious bulldog approach to learning new skills throughout my life. "

" When we think of misdirection, we think of something as looking off to the side when, actually, the things right in front of us are often the hardest to see: the things that you look at every day that you're blinded to. "

" We always think of misdirection as, 'Look over here while I do this over here!' And that's not what it is. You can be looking straight at it, and if you're not thinking about it, you won't process it. I find that fascinating. "

" When I became a teen, I ran into a friend at a magic shop who took me under his wing. I started reading up on magical theory and immediately blended that with what my brothers had shown me. "

Apollo Robbins

Teen

Theory

" I was doing all these hand exercises, trying to move things like other kids, catch things like other kids, and change my reflexes, and I guess I just didn't stop. That's why if somebody says to me, 'Can I learn this?' I will say, 'Probably, if you can get the psychology right.' "

" If I need to steal from a difficult spot, I like to use a 'bottom-up' attention strategy to direct the focus. "

" If you don't attend to something, you can't be aware of it. But ironically, you can attend to something without being aware of it. "

" I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, and I was performing at a show there. Jimmy Carter was going to be coming through with his Secret Service detail. The manager pulled me aside, and they didn't want me to shake Jimmy Carter's hand because they were afraid it would make the news if I stole from him. "

Apollo Robbins

Service

Him

" Usually, when people watch magic, there are two levels: the people who walk away accepting that there are things they don't know, and the other group, who wants to know, 'How did it work? How did that happen?' They want to unravel the puzzle. "

" I had physical disabilities as a kid. I had fine gross motor problems, so I didn't have natural dexterity in my hands. I also wore corrective braces on my legs, like in 'Forrest Gump.' "

" There are two kinds of magic. If you think of it like martial arts, there's sparring, where you are doing it with a partner, and the other is kata, where you're doing an exposition for the audience. "

" When I shake someone's hand, I apply the lightest pressure on their wrist with my index and middle fingers and lead them across my body to my left. The cross-body lead is actually a move from salsa dancing. I'm finding out what kind of a partner they're going to be, and I know that if they follow my lead, I can do whatever I want with them. "

" I wouldn't be able to do the things I do if I hadn't been around and seen the stuff my brothers did. "

" Many times, illusions or magic sets are designed as an exposition for the audience to watch, but the the style I do with the pickpocketing is directly interactive. "

" I'm a jazz performer - I have to improvise with what I'm given. "

" If you could control somebody's attention, what would you do with it? "

" Normally, when I'm not performing or stealing, I second-guess myself; I have doubts. "

" In the same way that a film director would use a film lens to blur out a certain item or use a spotlight, I use certain movements that draw the eye instinctually. "

" When I was around 13 or 14, and I was in a private school, I had a Frisbee that had the name Apollo on it. And I'd walk around with it. People would say, 'Hey, there's that Apollo kid.' That's where the name generated from. "

" A lot of magic is designed to appeal to people visually, but what I'm trying to affect is their minds, their moods, their perceptions. "

" Attention is what steers your perceptions; it's what controls your reality. It's the gateway to the mind. "

" Our absolutes should always be hypothesis. They should never be confirmed as fact because everything that we construct through our perceptions, through our memories, is so corruptible. The skills that I have can really display that. "

" The mechanisms inside me tick like a criminal. My mind works like theirs, and criminals can smell it when they're around me - but I choose not to use it in a bad way. I just choose to do good things. "

" Too often, we take our construct of reality as an absolute, and what I'm trying to point out for most people is it's important for us to know what we don't know. "