Stephen Sondheim Quotes - 9quotes.com

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I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
There's something inimical about the camera and song.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
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.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
I would have been a geologist.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Gotta watch out for directors.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.
Written by Stephen Sondheim
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
Written by Stephen Sondheim

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