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" I would have been a geologist. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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

" Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other. "

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

" 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

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

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. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other. "

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