Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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Automobile in America,Chromium steel in America,Wire-spoke wheel in America,Very big deal in America!Immigrant goes to America,Many hellos in America,Nobody knows in America,Puerto Rico's in America!I like the shores of America!Comfort is yours in America!Knobs on the doors in America!Wall-to-wall floors in America!
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To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
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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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It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
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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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They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.
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Writing is a form of mischief.
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The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
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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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There's something inimical about the camera and song.
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Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
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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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You get used to the exact amount of space between lines. You write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can't be too close.
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I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
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I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.
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In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
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I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
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I love computers. I love writing on them. I love gadgetry. The thing is: I am a slow reader. So, if I am going to get my work done, I read, like, a newspaper and that's it. If I got into websites and the internet, I wouldn't get any work done.
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It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people.
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Nice is different than good.
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On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
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I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.
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Let the moment go. . . . Don't forget it for a moment, though. Just remembering you've had an "and" when you're back to "or" makes the "or" mean more than it did before. . . . Now I understand! And it's time to leave the woods.
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Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution