Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

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

Stephen Sondheim

Related Quotes:

" Nice is different than good. "

Stephen Sondheim

" The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to 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

" Gotta watch out for directors. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

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

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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

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

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

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

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

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

" 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

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

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

" 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

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

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

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim