Stephen Sondheim quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Stephen Sondheim on Wise Famous Quotes.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.

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.

I'm always conscious of what I'm writing, conscious of what the actor may ask me. I have a defense for nearly every line in the song.

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.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

Writing is a form of mischief.

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.

It takes almost as much imagination to justify what you write as it does to write it.

Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.

Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.

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.

Teaching is a sacred profession. And art is a form of teaching.

I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.

I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me.

Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it's bad for the heart.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.

For me it's more fun to find an unexpected moment for a character to sing when you don't expect them to.

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.

I've always liked puzzles, since I was a kid. I like party games, silly games. I loved chess. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not particularly visual.

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you ...

I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

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.

The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.

When I'm writing a song, I try to be the character.

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.

Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution

They hear drums, we hear music.

The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.

The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.

The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world.

I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.

When the song is part of the action and working as dialogue, even two minutes is way too long.

The art of making art, is putting it together ...

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.

Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose.

Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.

Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.

Ah, but if you have no expectations, You can never have a disappointment.

Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.

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.

If I cannot fly, let me sing.

Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.

Music is structure out of Chaos

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

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.

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

My cage has many rooms.

I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.

Stay a child while you can be a child.

I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway.

If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.

Gotta watch out for directors.

The only reason to write is from love.

Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.

White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.

Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.

Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!

Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

We lose things.
And then we choose things.
And there are Louis's
And there are Georges-
Well, Louis's
And George.

My main goal is to tell a story.

Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.

Anything that is white is sweet.
Anything that is brown is meat.
Anything that is grey, don't eat.

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.

It's your father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.

By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.

You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.

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.

Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.

The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!

At last, my arm is complete again

Best to take the moment present as a present for the moment ...

I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.

Some of us don't like the way you've been telling it.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.

My idea of heaven is not writing.

I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.

There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.