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" 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

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

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" 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

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

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 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

" 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

" 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

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

Stephen Sondheim

" 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

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

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

" Nice is different than good. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

" I would have been a geologist. "

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 prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface. "

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

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

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 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

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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

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

" My idea of heaven is not writing. "

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

" Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. "

Stephen Sondheim