Quote

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

I have been trying to find out exactly when listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be allowed, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit.

Applause is the most powerful thing... people talk about the sound of it, but what I hear is glee.

Sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end.

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.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

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

The applause is a celebration not only of the actors but also of the audience. It constitutes a shared moment of delight.

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.

The sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.