Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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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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Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
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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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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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In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
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Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
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Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.
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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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The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
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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 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.
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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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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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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.
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Content dictates form and style.
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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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Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
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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 it goes by the name of London.
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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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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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By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
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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.
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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
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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!