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.

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

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

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.

Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.

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

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