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

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
Stephen Sondheim

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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

Nice is different than good.
Stephen Sondheim

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

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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

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?
Stephen Sondheim

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

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.
Stephen Sondheim

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

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.
Stephen Sondheim