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All of us love applause, and so we should - it means that the listener likes us!

I'd get more applause than some because I was just seventeen. If they didn't clap at the end of my act I would limp off stage and boy would they feel guilty. They would all burst into tremendous applause as they saw this poor cripple kid walking off.

If you walk into a room and one hundred people say, 'You are a lovely, beautiful person', who isn't going to be affected by that? But you have to tell yourself not to value that. You have to tell yourself - or at least I do - to not become accustomed to hearing applause in any way, because I think that's dangerous.

Laughter is much more important than applause. Applause is almost a duty. Laughter is a reward.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can't be all that bad.

I need the applause.

Applause, it's very nice, of course. But when you're giving, and creating, and then there is the silence of everyone sitting there, listening, waiting, that is great.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.