"Okay, you asked for it.  Smitty, your tricks are good.  Hell, some of 'em even got me baffled.  But clever tricks don't make a magician.  The trouble is you're not really with it.  You behave like a carney - you mind your own business and you never crab anybody else's act and you're helpful if anybody needs it.  But you're not a carney.  You know why?  You don't have any feeling for what makes a chump a chump; you don't get inside his mind.  A real magician can make the marks open their mouths and catch flies just by picking a quarter out of the air.  That Thurston's levitation you do - I've never seen it done any more perfectly but the marks don't warm to it.  No psychology.  Now take me, for example.  I can't even pick a quarter out of the air - hell, I can barely use a knife and fork without cutting my mouth.  I got no act... except I got the one act that counts.  I know marks.  I know where that streak of larceny is in his heart, I know just how wide it is.  I know what he hungers for, whether he knows it or not.  That's showmanship, son, whether you're a politician running for office, a preacher pounding a pulpit... or a magician.  You find out what the chumps want and you can leave half your props in your trunk."