Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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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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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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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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My main goal is to tell a story.
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I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
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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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A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
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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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Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
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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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The man i'll never be, Who remembers him?
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Stay a child while you can be a child.
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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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Every day a little death.
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Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.
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The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff.
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Music is structure out of Chaos
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The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
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Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.
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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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Ah, but if you have no expectations, You can never have a disappointment.
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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
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The only reason to write is from love.