Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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Content dictates form and style.
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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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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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I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
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I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
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That's the trouble with awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you've been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing.
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I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.
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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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The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
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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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A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
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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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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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Art is craft, not inspiration.
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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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My main goal is to tell a story.
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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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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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If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.
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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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Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you... Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.
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The man i'll never be, Who remembers him?
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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.