"I completely understand why a businessman would fire me from 'Saturday Night Live'. Because he was seeing Jay Leno kill 10 minutes a night, doing his monologue with wall-to-wall laughs and applause, then I do 10 minutes a week to, sometimes, breathtaking silence. He's just listening for the laughs."

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Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys. but to move an audience in such a role, to hear in the applause that unmistakable note which breaks through good theatre manners and comes from the heart, is to feel that you have won through to life itself. Such pleasure does not vanish with the fall of the curtain, but becomes part of one's own life.

— Alicia Markova