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" Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt. "

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" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

Difference

Poetry

Page

" When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't. "

Stephen Sondheim

Growing Up

Show

" By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur. "

" 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. "

" I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds. "

" I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically. "

" In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies. "

" I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it. "

" Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure. "

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

" I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged. "

" I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on. "

" Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten. "

" I was a mathematician by nature, and still am - I just knew I didn't want to be a mathematician. So I decided not to take any mathematics courses. "

" 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. "

" I'm always conscious of what I'm writing, conscious of what the actor may ask me. I have a defense for nearly every line in the song. "

Stephen Sondheim

Actor

Line

" 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. "

" Every single song I've ever written is sung by a character created by somebody else. Some might have a jaundiced view of love, some don't. But none of these songs is me singing - not a single one. "

" If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns. "

" I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are. "

" My parents weren't around much, but I assumed everybody's family was the same. I didn't know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service. "

" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

Laugh

Love

" A close-up on screen can say all a song can. "

" So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work. "

" I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me. "

Stephen Sondheim

My Life

Find

" 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. "

" Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on. "