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

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

" 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

" I would have been a geologist. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

" 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

" I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world. "

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

" When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. "

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

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

" The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution. "

Stephen Sondheim

" After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes. "

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

" 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. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

Stephen Sondheim

" Nice is different than good. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

" 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 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

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

Stephen Sondheim