Stephen Sondheim Quotes

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.
Stephen Sondheim

Work, Rather, Views

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.
Stephen Sondheim

Time, Trying, Same

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

Movies, Generation, Popular

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

Why, Rich, Poor

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

Music, Sure, Level

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

Written, Musical, Comedies

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

Before, Wait, Last

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

Nature, Mean, Meaning

My idea of heaven is not writing.
Stephen Sondheim

Writing, Idea, Heaven

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

Mother, Woman, Working

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

Money, Put, Sometimes

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

Music, Poetry, Live

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

Music, Writing, Writer

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

Father, Days, Months

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

Work, Good, Songs

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

Art, Today, Fact

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

Work, Opinion, Movie

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

Yourself, Everything, Down

There's something inimical about the camera and song.
Stephen Sondheim

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

Show, Growing, Either

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

Changes, Written, Audience

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.
Stephen Sondheim

Writing, Start, Strengths

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.
Stephen Sondheim

Rich, Personal, Investment

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: March 22, 1930

Links

Find on Amazon: Stephen Sondheim

Cite this Page: Citation

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