Stephen Sondheim Quotes

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

Stephen Sondheim

• Writing
• Song
• Reason

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Quotes to Explore

• To live in New York is to see the world as it is to come.

  

  Karan Mahajan
  • World
  • Live
  • New York

• The Japanese version comes with a translation, but that's different from the lyrics, so people could look things up and find a translation of their own if they're interested.

  

  Utada Hikaru
  • People
  • Up
  • Different

• I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.

  

  Washed Out
  • Up
  • Song
  • Kind

• I wonder now how tough you have to be to get big things done.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • Done
  • Wonder
  • Tough

• Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.

  

  Queen Latifah
  • Up
  • Time
  • Long

• Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

  

  Walt Disney
  • Different
  • Job
  • Language

• Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.

  

  Gary Oldman
  • Up
  • Family
  • Money

• Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience.

  

  Kate Forsyth
  • People
  • Children
  • Think

• There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.

  

  Fiona Shaw
  • Great
  • Worst
  • Relief

• My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.

  

  Hans Hofmann
  • Life
  • Experience
  • Nature

• I just feel energized when I am around young, talented people. There is something about these kids that's amazing. I learn as much from them as they do from me.

  

  Sally Struthers
  • People
  • Kids
  • Young

• As a writer given to the old formalities of rhyme and meter, I sometimes feel endangered these days.

  

  X. J. Kennedy
  • Sometimes
  • Feel
  • Old

• When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

  

  Karin Slaughter
  • Up
  • Book
  • Father

• When God created man and woman, he was thinking, 'Who shall I give the power to, to give birth to the next human being?' And God chose woman. And this is the big evidence that women are powerful.

  

  Malala Yousafzai
  • God
  • Thinking
  • Women

• I was free when I was 12 because I got my first skateboard. I've been free ever since.

  

  Harmony Korine
  • Free
  • First
  • Ever

• I always look for my mistakes so I can correct them in the future.

  

  Omri Katz
  • Future
  • Look
  • Mistakes

• It's also somewhat in the center of a number of things that will be useful to the company.

  

  Jack Kilby
  • Company
  • Will
  • Useful

• There's no wrong time to make the right decision.

  

  Dalton McGuinty
  • Time
  • Decision
  • Right

• I wake up in the morning, and I look in a mirror, and I go, 'Is this really all I got? Is this all the universe has given me?'

  

  Keala Settle
  • Up
  • Universe
  • Morning

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

  

  Stephen Sondheim
  • Audience
  • Written
  • Temperature

• I don't think I could ever give up music. It's what makes me tick. If there was no music, there would be no writing.

  

  Maggie Stiefvater
  • Up
  • Music
  • Writing

• I think it's all about the people who listen to your music, and loving playing and writing. Once you've got those two, and they're your main two priorities, then radio and TV and all the other stuff that comes with it will come. But that's not the be-all end-all.

  

  Gabrielle Aplin
  • People
  • Music
  • Writing

• I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.

  

  Jane Smiley
  • Writing
  • Book

• I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

  

  Stephen Sondheim
  • Writing
  • Song
  • Reason