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The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim -
Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
Stephen Sondheim -
I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
Stephen Sondheim -
Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
Stephen Sondheim -
I do not dwell on dreams I know how soon a dream becomes an expectation How can I have expectations? Look at me, No, Captain, Look at me, Look at me!
Stephen Sondheim -
Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim -
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Stephen Sondheim -
Bit by bit, putting it together... Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, Every little detail plays a part. Having just the vision's no solution, Everything depends on execution, Putting it together, that's what counts.
Stephen Sondheim
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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim -
Writing is a form of mischief.
Stephen Sondheim -
I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim -
You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
Stephen Sondheim
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Art is craft, not inspiration.
Stephen Sondheim -
Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
Stephen Sondheim -
Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
Stephen Sondheim -
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.
Stephen Sondheim