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

Stephen Sondheim

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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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" There's something inimical about the camera and song. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" I was raised to be charming, not sincere. "

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. "

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" I have, by nature, an analytical mind. "

Stephen Sondheim

" Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words! "

Stephen Sondheim

" I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people. "

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

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

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway. "

Stephen Sondheim

" I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds. "

Stephen Sondheim

" I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface. "

Stephen Sondheim

" I have inherited my father's sense of humour about myself. It's a lot more pleasant to make fun of yourself than when someone else does. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't 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 you're making art. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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. "

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. "

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. "

Stephen Sondheim