Stephen Sondheim Quotes

I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.

My main goal is to tell a story.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.

I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.

You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.

Everyone would like to be on Broadway, cause if a show works, you make a great deal of money and it allows you to write other shows.

The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together,/ That keep marriage in tact.

I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.

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

Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

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.

I've always liked puzzles, since I was a kid. I like party games, silly games. I loved chess. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not particularly visual.

Lemuel Ayers had had a huge success producing and designing Kiss Me, Kate. He wanted to produce this as a musical. I got the job. It was a professional score.

I do not dwell on dreams I know how soon a dream becomes an expectation How can I have expectations? Look at me, No, Captain, Look at me, Look at me!

I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.

I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!

I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.

With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.

My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.

Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.

By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

Only capitalists get photographers.

It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.

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

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.

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.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

When I listen to my work, I think, what's so inflammatory about it? It's not really that dissonant. A lot of people who used to hate my stuff have come round to it.

They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.

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

Take a play that you like but you think is flawed, and see if you can improve it and turn it into a musical. [...] Then make up your own story.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you... Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

Musicals are so expensive to put on the stage that you have to have the backing of a corporate, you have to have Universal Studios or Disney or somebody to put in the money.

I like songs that are part of a dramatic texture, and therefore I like the scenes to be active. I wanna follow the story and that means you lean on the actors.

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

Dreams are a sweet mistake All dreamers must awake On, then, with the dance No backward glance Or my heart will break Never look back.

Every day a little death.

I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.

Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.

To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.

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

There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.

I chose and my world was shaken, so what? The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.