Stephen Sondheim Quotations

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

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

I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.

The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

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.

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

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

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.

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

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

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

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.

If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

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

My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity.

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.

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

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.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.

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

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.

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.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

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

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

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

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

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

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

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

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 was a mathematician by nature, and still am - I just knew I didn't want to be a mathematician. So I decided not to take any mathematics courses.

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.

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

Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'

The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?

Every single song I've ever written is sung by a character created by somebody else. Some might have a jaundiced view of love, some don't. But none of these songs is me singing - not a single one.

I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.

My parents weren't around much, but I assumed everybody's family was the same. I didn't know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them.

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.

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.

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

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

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.

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

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

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

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

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

It ain't just a question of misunderstood, Deep down inside him, he's no good

Stephen Sondheim was there to coach us. It was wonderful. He'd say surprising things: I shouldn't enunciate too fully when I sang 'Not Getting Married Today' from 'Company' because it would throw the rhyme scheme off. Usually you are encouraged to enunciate as clearly as possible. But his tips would make a song more effective.

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the woods. Do not let it grieve you, no one leaves for good

I need them musically. You figure it out. Figure it out.

The concerts you enjoy together neighbors you annoy together children you destroy together that make marriage a joy

I love computers. I love writing on them. I love gadgetry. The thing is: I am a slow reader. So, if I am going to get my work done, I read, like, a newspaper and that's it. If I got into websites and the internet, I wouldn't get any work done.

If I got involved with the chat rooms and Facebook and everything - I would probably never leave. That's why I don't do it. I literally don't do it. At all.

I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.

I like songs that are part of a dramatic texture, and therefore I like the scenes to be active. I wanna follow the story and that means you lean on the actors.

That's the trouble with awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you've been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing.

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

Musicals are so expensive to put on the stage that you have to have the backing of a corporate, you have to have Universal Studios or Disney or somebody to put in the money.

I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.

A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together,/ That keep marriage in tact.

TODD: The history of the world, my love -- LOVETT: Save a lot of graves, Do a lot of relatives favors! TODD: Is those below serving those up above! LOVETT: Ev'rybody shaves, So there should be plenty of flavors! TODD: How gratifying for once to know BOTH: That those above will serve those down below!

The man i'll never be, Who remembers him?

They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.

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.

Sometimes people leave you Halfway through the wood Others may decieve you You decide what's good You decide alone But no one is alone

I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.

Writing is a form of mischief.

Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world, so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted.

Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome and heir to a throne?

If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.

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.

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

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

Automobile in America,Chromium steel in America,Wire-spoke wheel in America,Very big deal in America!Immigrant goes to America,Many hellos in America,Nobody knows in America,Puerto Rico's in America!I like the shores of America!Comfort is yours in America!Knobs on the doors in America!Wall-to-wall floors in America!

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you dont feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel youre making art.

Slotted spoons don't hold much soup...

Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player." That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player." How can you tell?" It's PIPING hot!" Then blow on it first!

Every day a little death.

Dreams are a sweet mistake All dreamers must awake.. On then with the dance No backward glance Or my heart will break Never look back NEVER LOOK BACK. . . . Follies

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

So here's to the girls on the go- Everybody tries Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch - The dinosaurs surviving the crunch - Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch - Everybody rise!