Stephen Sondheim Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Stephen Sondheim quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
— Stephen Sondheim
I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.
— Stephen Sondheim
If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.
— Stephen Sondheim
I have inherited my father's sense of humour about myself. It's a lot more pleasant to make fun of yourself than when someone else does.
— Stephen Sondheim
Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.
— Stephen Sondheim
Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
— Stephen Sondheim
Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
— Stephen Sondheim
I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.
— Stephen Sondheim
I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
— Stephen Sondheim
Art is craft, not inspiration.
— Stephen Sondheim
Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.
— Stephen Sondheim
I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me.
— Stephen Sondheim
If the end is right, it justifies the beans!
— Stephen Sondheim
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it's bad for the heart.
— Stephen Sondheim
I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.
— Charles Busch
You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
— Stephen Sondheim
I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can't analyze humor. You just have to get through it.
— Elaine Stritch
Stephen Sondheim I am in awe of.
— Christoph Waltz
Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
— Stephen Sondheim
The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
— Stephen Sondheim
I do not dwell on dreams I know how soon a dream becomes an expectation How can I have expectations? Look at me, No, Captain, Look at me, Look at me!
— Stephen Sondheim
At last, my arm is complete again
— Stephen Sondheim
Best to take the moment present as a present for the moment ...
— Stephen Sondheim
I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it.
— Stephen Sondheim
Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.
— Stephen Sondheim
It's your father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.
— Stephen Sondheim
Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
— Stephen Sondheim
Music is structure out of Chaos
— Stephen Sondheim
Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.
— Stephen Sondheim
To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
— Stephen Sondheim
Only capitalists get photographers.
— Stephen Sondheim
I would have been a geologist.
— Stephen Sondheim
My idea of heaven is not writing.
— Stephen Sondheim
Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see ...
— Stephen Sondheim
I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.
— Christoph Waltz
When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
— Stephen Sondheim
I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.
— Kenneth Branagh
When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.
— Stephen Sondheim
I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
— Stephen Sondheim
The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
— Stephen Sondheim
I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
— Stephen Sondheim
Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
— Stephen Sondheim
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
— Stephen Sondheim
The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together,/ That keep marriage in tact.
— Stephen Sondheim
You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.
— Stephen Sondheim
The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.
— Stephen Sondheim
They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.
— Stephen Sondheim
The art of making art, is putting it together ...
— Stephen Sondheim
Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
— Stephen Sondheim
The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
— Stephen Sondheim
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
— Stephen Sondheim
Swing your razor wide! Sweeney, hold it to the skies!
— Stephen Sondheim
You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
— Stephen Sondheim
I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.
— Stephen Sondheim
The only reason to write is from love.
— Stephen Sondheim
Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.
— Stephen Sondheim
My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
— Stephen Sondheim
The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff.
— Stephen Sondheim
Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
— Stephen Sondheim
Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.
— Stephen Sondheim
Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
— Stephen Sondheim
A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.
— Stephen Sondheim
We lose things.And then we choose things.
And there are Louis's
And there are Georges-
Well, Louis's
And George. — Stephen Sondheim
My main goal is to tell a story.
— Stephen Sondheim
Gotta watch out for directors.
— Stephen Sondheim
White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.
— Stephen Sondheim
Take a play that you like but you think is flawed, and see if you can improve it and turn it into a musical. Then make up your own story.
— Stephen Sondheim
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
— Stephen Sondheim
Anything that is white is sweet.Anything that is brown is meat.
Anything that is grey, don't eat. — Stephen Sondheim
It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.
— Stephen Sondheim
Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.
— Stephen Sondheim
I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
— Stephen Sondheim
Content dictates form and style.
— Stephen Sondheim
I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.
— Stephen Sondheim
White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.
— Stephen Sondheim
There's something inimical about the camera and song.
— Stephen Sondheim
Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.
— Stephen Sondheim
Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.
— Stephen Sondheim
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
— Stephen Sondheim
I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
— Stephen Sondheim
Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose.
— Stephen Sondheim
There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.
— Stephen Sondheim
I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.
— Stephen Sondheim
For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
— Stephen Sondheim
Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome and heir to a throne?
— Stephen Sondheim
How many times do you get to be 35?Eleven — Stephen Sondheim
I have, by nature, an analytical mind.
— Stephen Sondheim
My cage has many rooms.
— Stephen Sondheim
I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.
— Stephen Sondheim
Stay a child while you can be a child.
— Stephen Sondheim
I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway.
— Stephen Sondheim
