Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
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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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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.
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I was never much of a reader. I'm a slow reader, which is unusual, because I'm so into language and I love words so much. But it's hard for me to read.
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White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.
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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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The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.
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I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.
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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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There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and the vermin of the world inhabit it and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit and it goes by the name of London. At the top of the hole sit the privileged few Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo turning beauty to filth and greed... I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders, for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru but there's no place like London!
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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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Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
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Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
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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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I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
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By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
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If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
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Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
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I like songs that are part of a dramatic texture, and therefore I like the scenes to be active. I wanna follow the story and that means you lean on the actors.
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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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Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
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Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
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Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.