Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Audience
Collaboration
You
Related Quotes:
" Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words! "
Stephen Sondheim
Two
Words
Language
" I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds. "
Stephen Sondheim
Disbelief
Great
Two
" The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890? "
Stephen Sondheim
Who
Art
Fact
" Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other. "
Stephen Sondheim
Some
Way
Feels
" My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other. "
Stephen Sondheim
Life
Each
Interfere
" Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. "
Stephen Sondheim
Art
Out
Order
" 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
" 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
See
Own
Days
" I would have been a geologist. "
Stephen Sondheim
Geologist
Would
Been
" 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
" A close-up on screen can say all a song can. "
Stephen Sondheim
Close-Up
Say
Screen
" One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there. "
Stephen Sondheim
Writing
Music
Sit
" 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
New York
Loved
Always
" 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 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
" Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead. "
Stephen Sondheim
Dead
Everyone
Up
" By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur. "
Stephen Sondheim
Professional
Young
Time
" I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged. "
Stephen Sondheim
Until
Cast
Score
" 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
Up
" When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. "
Stephen Sondheim
Audience
Temperature
You
" 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
Father
Yourself
Myself
" 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
" 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
" So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work. "
Stephen Sondheim
Because
Know
Good
" Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them. "
Stephen Sondheim
Way
Original
Best
" 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
People
Investment
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
" 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
" After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes. "
Stephen Sondheim
Story
Comedy
Just
" 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
Sometimes
Show
People