To make an individual uncomfortable, that is my task.

Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience. You step out on the stage and you can feel it is a nervous audience. So you calm them down. I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. I'm still. I don't move. I wait for the introduction. Maybe I cough. Maybe I touch myself. But before I do anything, I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills.

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

My greatest fear is giving performances. I feel I am responsible for the audience BUT I am also scared of them.

That's the first thing an audience wants to feel when someone gets up on a stage: "Does this person know what they're doing?" "'Cause if they do, then I can relax." And when you're trying to elicit laughter, that's-- they have to be relaxed. If they're worried about you, the laughs are harder to get.

It's my belief that in public service, if you aren't making someone uncomfortable, you aren't doing your job.

it annoys me to see people comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin. If you don't like my preaching you must lump it. I really cannot help it. In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I

I've been there, done it all. I'm very clear about my priorities as an entertainer. I want the audience to feel good when they watch me. That's what I'm paid for. Why should I sell anything else?

I don't like to be my own audience, I find that being my own audience, being in the audience, makes me self-conscious, basically. So I tune in sometimes, with the sound off, to check it out and I back up to it. In the future I will look at it when some time has passed.

Anything great that you’re going to want to accomplish is going to involve fear and discomfort, and making other people uncomfortable,” she says. “But you have to go for it anyway. That’s how you make a difference.”

I have the feeling that the night you look at your audience and don't see yourself, and the night the audience looks at you and doesn't see themselves reflected in you, it's all over.

Yes, everyone you love would be uncomfortable for a long while, maybe. What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.

I still get nervous at times for not knowing what kind or size of the audience to expect or even how they will receive you because it’s always a different reception

Always warm up the audience with a joke....If you are not a particularly funny person, make sure that you inform them that it's a joke....