Stephen Sondheim Quotes

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.

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.

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

It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.

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

Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.

I was watching him crawl, Back over the wall-! Then bang! Crash! And the lightning flash! And- well, that's another story, Never mind- Anyway.

Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.

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

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.

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

The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.

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.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

My main goal is to tell a story.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn’t see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.

You get used to the exact amount of space between lines. You write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can't be too close.

Writing is a form of mischief.

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.

It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.

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!

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

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

My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.

Music is structure out of Chaos