Stephen Sondheim Quotes

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
• Way
• Actors
• Weakness
• Casts

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores.

  

  Ornette Coleman
  • People
  • Up
  • Good

• I didn't live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don't know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

  

  Lana Del Rey
  • Life
  • Time
  • Different

• My highest point was the first thing I won, a short story competition in a women's magazine in the Eighties. It was the first time I'd had my writing validated, and the first thing I'd ever shown anyone else.

  

  Kate Atkinson
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Women

• I hate the way chorus boxes sound.

  

  Pat Metheny
  • Way
  • Hate
  • Sound

• It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.

  

  Thebe Neruda Kgositsile
  • Time
  • Good
  • Long

• When I'm writing, I spend all my time in The Grocer on Elgin buying ready-made meals; I think they are the only reason my husband and kids haven't left me.

  

  Sadie Jones
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Kids

• I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.

  

  Kate Christensen
  • People
  • Writing
  • Myself

• I spent a lot of time doing really unimportant work as an actor. It was important when I started writing that I obviously make it entertaining, or no one is going to go see it - but to really make you think, that is my goal.

  

  Taylor Sheridan
  • Time
  • Work
  • Important

• The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

  

  Abel Ferrara
  • Work
  • Love
  • Me

• Shania Twain brought a whole other fan base to country music with her sound, the way the videos were produced.

  

  Faith Hill
  • Music
  • Way
  • Sound

• Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain.

  

  Natalie Morales
  • Thinking
  • Writing
  • Done

• That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

  

  Ville Valo HIM
  • People
  • Up
  • Music

• I like to think that I'm one of the few people in public life who write their own material. I write every word. And I really enjoy writing - especially my political commentary.

  

  Ed Koch
  • People
  • Life
  • Writing

• I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature.

  

  Sam Weller
  • Great
  • Writing
  • Pretty

• I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not.

  

  Fannie Hurst
  • Writing
  • Happy
  • Unhappy

• I'm definitely writing my fears. It's almost therapeutic to at least voice a terror, to say, 'I'm worried that Lake Powell looks low and Lake Mead looks even lower.'

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Writing
  • Voice
  • Lake

• Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.

  

  Patrick White
  • Writing
  • Age
  • Running

• Reading isn't about managing expectations. In certain ways, writing is. You're trying to send signals early in a book about what might be coming later, but I think worrying about the kind of chatter around a book is something I try and stay as far away from when I'm reading.

  

  Garth Risk Hallberg
  • Writing
  • Trying
  • Book

• I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.

  

  Willa Cather
  • Writing
  • Women
  • Adventure

• With Twitter and Instagram and all of these vehicles where fans can directly interact with you and get your attention, there's a little bit of an entitlement. Like, "Why won't you follow me or write me back?" Well, if I write you back, then I have to write everyone back.

  

  Ingrid Michaelson
  • Writing
  • Attention
  • Fans

• '8 Mile' could do without an unnecessary class swipe. In a final throwdown, Rabbit clowns a competitor by revealing that the guy went to suburban Detroit Cranbrook, one of the finest private schools in the country.

  

  Elvis Mitchell
  • Country
  • Guy

• Debates, I hate.

  

  George H. W. Bush
  • Hate

• Reading and writing are closed-room activities, which literally take you away from the gaze of others. The greater risk is that they also remove others from your gaze.

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Reading
  • Risk
  • Activities

• 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
  • Way
  • Actors