Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Listen
Just
Avoid
Related Quotes:
" Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.' "
Stephen Sondheim
Time
You
Ahead
" When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. "
Stephen Sondheim
Audience
Temperature
You
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Chance
Story
You
" 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
Know
You
Writing
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Create
Imagination
Meaning
" 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
Mathematics
Nature
Take
" 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
Woman
Ambition
Clothes
" I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me. "
Stephen Sondheim
My Life
Me
Find
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Love
View
Song
" So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work. "
Stephen Sondheim
Because
Know
Good
" In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies. "
Stephen Sondheim
Out
Popular
Generation
" Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words! "
Stephen Sondheim
Two
Words
Language
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Views
Your
Work
" I have, by nature, an analytical mind. "
Stephen Sondheim
Mind
Nature
Analytical
" 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
Because
You
Why
" I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are. "
Stephen Sondheim
Know
Why
People
" Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten. "
Stephen Sondheim
Rewritten
Written
Musical
" There's something inimical about the camera and song. "
Stephen Sondheim
Song
About
Camera
" 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
Me
" I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged. "
Stephen Sondheim
Until
Cast
Score
" 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
Art
You
Music
" I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway. "
Stephen Sondheim
Recognition
Broadway
Lights
" I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on. "
Stephen Sondheim
Choice
Move
May
" 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
Me
" 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
Point
Move
Think
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
People
School
Thought
" The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them. "
Stephen Sondheim
Public
Broadway
Country
" 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. "
Stephen Sondheim
Pencil
Down
Yourself
" I would have been a geologist. "
Stephen Sondheim
Geologist
Would
Been
" I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface. "
Stephen Sondheim
Neurotic
People
Surface