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I always found that the closer I got to who I really am, on stage, the more they responded to it.

As any speaker will tell you, when you address a large number of people from a stage, you try to make eye contact with people in the audience to communicate that you're accessible and interested in them.

If I do my very best, then the camera and the audience will follow me, and eventually they will somehow feel like I feel. I don't have to show it to them. I don't have to speak it out loud.

It wasn't so much that I was all alone on stage, but it was the realization of how much you need the response-you need the audience to tell you where to go.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.

I like to get within handshaking distance of the crowd. If it happens, they know it, we know it, and that's all we came here for.

Whether it means having a show, or a movie, or just being on a stage, I need an avenue to say what I have to say.

I am quite short, but that never comes across when I'm onstage in front of people. When I get offstage and greet an audience afterwards, their first reaction is to comment on my height because it seems like a very drastic difference.