Even if you don't like a concert of mine, please, please applaud at the end anyway.

We seem to have set up some very arcane rules as to when it is actually OK to applaud.

If there were no rules about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.

If the audience walks out of a concert thinking, What a wonderful experience, then we have done our job.

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.

I would like to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago. That has always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives.