Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.
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Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.
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With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
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The last collaborator is your audience ... when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well -- work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece -- suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.
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Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.
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When I listen to my work, I think, what's so inflammatory about it? It's not really that dissonant. A lot of people who used to hate my stuff have come round to it.
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My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.
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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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The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
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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.
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Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.
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I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
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For me it's more fun to find an unexpected moment for a character to sing when you don't expect them to.
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Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
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I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
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I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.
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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.
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Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
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Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
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Into the woods you go again You have to every now and then Into the woods, no telling when Be ready for the journey Into the woods, each time you go There's more to learn of what you know.
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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.
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I've always liked puzzles, since I was a kid. I like party games, silly games. I loved chess. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not particularly visual.
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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.