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.

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.

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.

For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.

Content dictates form and style.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

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.