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" Nice is different than good. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

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" 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

" 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. "

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" 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. "

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" Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father. "

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" 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

" I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two 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

" 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 was raised to be charming, not sincere. "

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

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

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

" 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

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

" 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

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

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

" 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

" 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

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

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

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

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

" 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

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

Stephen Sondheim