Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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If the end is right, it justifies the beans!
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They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.
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So here's to the girls on the go Everybody tries. Look into their eyes, And you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch, The dinosaurs surviving the crunch. Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch Everybody rise!
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Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.
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The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.
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When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.
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I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.
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After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
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Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player." That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player." How can you tell?" It's PIPING hot!" Then blow on it first!
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My cage has many rooms.
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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.
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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.
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Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
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Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.
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When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
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Swing your razor wide! Sweeney, hold it to the skies!
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Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
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I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.
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I was watching him crawl, Back over the wall-! Then bang! Crash! And the lightning flash! And- well, that's another story, Never mind- Anyway.
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Dreams are a sweet mistake All dreamers must awake On, then, with the dance No backward glance Or my heart will break Never look back.
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I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
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Everyone would like to be on Broadway, cause if a show works, you make a great deal of money and it allows you to write other shows.
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With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
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The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!