Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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Art is craft, not inspiration.
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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.
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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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A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.
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I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it.
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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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The art of making art, is putting it together.
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Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
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Content dictates form and style.
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My main goal is to tell a story.
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A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
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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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Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
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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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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
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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.
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Musicals are so expensive to put on the stage that you have to have the backing of a corporate, you have to have Universal Studios or Disney or somebody to put in the money.
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Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.
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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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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
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You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
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Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you dont feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel youre making art.
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I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.
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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.