Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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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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With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
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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.
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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 personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
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Puzzles are like songs - A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
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Only capitalists get photographers.
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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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Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
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Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.
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No one has ever known me as clearly as you. No one has ever shown me that love allows everything. Not pretty or safe or easy but something I never knew. Love within reason, that isn't love and I learned that from you.
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I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.
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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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It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.
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I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
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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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To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
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TODD: The history of the world, my love -- LOVETT: Save a lot of graves, Do a lot of relatives favors! TODD: Is those below serving those up above! LOVETT: Ev'rybody shaves, So there should be plenty of flavors! TODD: How gratifying for once to know BOTH: That those above will serve those down below!
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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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You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.
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Nice is different than good.
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There's something inimical about the camera and song.
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In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.