Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
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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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To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
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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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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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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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Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
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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!
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There's something inimical about the camera and song.
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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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I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
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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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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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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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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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Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
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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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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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Johnny Depp's performance is quite remarkable. Sweeney's desire for revenge and the simmering anger and hurt that he feels carry the story forward, and Johnny finds the most remarkable variety within that narrow set of emotions. The intensity is at a boil all the time and he never drops it. It's real anger.
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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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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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When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
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Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
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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.