Stephen Sondheim Quotes

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

Stephen Sondheim

• Song
• Comedy
• Revolution
• Stories
• Scene
• Entertainment

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Quotes to Explore

• Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song.

  

  Hal Sparks
  • Song
  • Words
  • Influence

• I started getting really interested in comedy when I was in middle school.

  

  Abbi Jacobson
  • School
  • Comedy
  • Middle

• There was a film called 'FM,' and we were asked to do the title song. And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.' It took a day or two to write.

  

  Walter Becker Steely Dan
  • Song
  • Words
  • Day

• There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

  

  Beck
  • Different
  • Writing
  • Song

• I actually love doing comedy!

  

  Felicity Jones
  • Comedy
  • Doing
  • Actually

• As in any technological revolution, there will be winners and losers. On balance, everyone will come out ahead, although there will be particular companies that will not be able to cope with a new environment.

  

  Ralph Merkle
  • Environment
  • Balance
  • Revolution

• From the stage, I can reach a large audience, and you learn from being on stage how much a song reaches, what extent of the crowd a song can reach. I write in a way that can reach most of the audience, but I also wanted to have truly intimate moments as well, many intimate moments, more so than the big moments.

  

  Keinan Abdi Warsame
  • Song
  • Moments
  • Learn

• Wayne and Drake, it takes them so long to do a song. I understand why, because they want it to be perfect. But I think I can do a perfect song in 10 minutes.

  

  Young Thug
  • Long
  • Why
  • Think

• I still want to do a romantic comedy or a western or a gritty independent film... there's so much that I still want to do.

  

  Laura Vandervoort
  • Want
  • Comedy
  • Independent

• The words we use have weight. Whether it's in a conversation with a friend or something said publicly on stage or broadcast. And as performers, we know that because that's why we choose the words we use - that's the whole point of comedy.

  

  Hari Kondabolu
  • Why
  • Words
  • Comedy

• One way in which 'Friends' did resemble 'Seinfeld' is that it really found its audience over the summer of 1995 in reruns. That's when the main title song, 'I'll Be There for You', by the Rembrandts, exploded, too.

  

  Warren Littlefield
  • Friends
  • Song
  • Summer

• What you hear about the band is always going to be more disturbing than any particular song.

  

  Daisy Berkowitz
  • Song
  • You
  • Band

• I'd like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Fun
  • Song
  • Wall

• The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution was that the former was mostly the work of Communist party members and others who wanted to bring about 'socialism with a human face.'

  

  Adam Michnik
  • Work
  • Party
  • Revolution

• I decided I would go to NYU so I could get into the comedy world and have legit housing, and my parents would not have trusted investing in a straight-up comedy career.

  

  Ilana Glazer
  • Up
  • World
  • Career

• Comedy is basically self-deprecation.

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • Comedy
  • Basically

• I was once sitting on a tube, and someone was playing my song so loudly through their ear phones next to me. I just stayed silent and chuckled to myself.

  

  Sam Smith
  • Song
  • Myself
  • Silent

• My music is mostly for the music. And it gives the liberty to do anything which I want. And nobody limits me to one genre of music. But I learn from life and I try to give back to life, in a way, whether it's the thought of the song or whether it's the approach to the arrangement or anything.

  

  A. R. Rahman
  • Life
  • Music
  • Song

• You ask, 'What about the innocent bystanders?' But we are in a time of revolution. If you are a bystander, you are not innocent.

  

  Abbie Hoffman
  • Time
  • Revolution
  • Innocent

• We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

  

  Tahar Ben Jelloun
  • World
  • Stop
  • Equal

• It doesn't bother me to talk about my private life, it doesn't bother me to talk about anything. My life is like a glass of water, transparent.

  

  Shakira
  • Life
  • Water

• Rarely do I do film press because I'm so low on the food chain of the movie, and for me it's just this thing I did for four weeks before the next tour started.

  

  Henry Rollins Black Flag
  • Film
  • Week
  • Four

• When somebody has an enormous success in this culture, people start asking two questions, which are 'What are you doing now?' and 'How are you going to beat that?' And I have to say, I love the assumption that your intention is to beat yourself constantly - that you're in battle against yourself.

  

  Elizabeth Gilbert
  • People
  • Success
  • Culture

• After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

  

  Stephen Sondheim
  • Song
  • Comedy
  • Revolution