Stephen Sondheim Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
-
He came from a rock band and even though he was not a lead singer, I knew he was musical just from that. I also knew that he was intelligent enough from talking to him, that he would not play this part unless he could handle it vocally. I knew he was not about to get up there and have to have his voice dubbed or come off croaking. So Johnny Depp casted Johnny Depp. I trusted him entirely. I knew that he was no fool and he would only do it if he felt he could handle it. I told him to listen to the score carefully and if you can handle it, fine by me, and I was right.
-
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.
-
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
-
I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
-
It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.
-
Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
-
The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
-
The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
-
I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.
-
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.
-
What justifies a character singing one idea for 3 minutes on the screen? I get impatient and want the story to carry on. I don't get impatient in the theatre.
-
When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
-
You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture.
-
Just remember, Someone is on your side (our side) Someone else is not While we're seeing our side Maybe we forgot: they are not alone. No one is alone.
-
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Art is craft, not inspiration.
-
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.
-
I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.
-
I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.