Despite the successes, you remember the failures - rather lovingly.

The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.

I don't look back. I look forward and plan new shows. That's really feeding the most important part of working in the theater.

Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.

I have a terrible memory because I'm not interested in the past. It's done, it's done.

A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.

I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.

Criticism is valuable... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.

It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.

I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.

We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.

I'm joking when I say I'm the grand-pop of those claiming to be an avatar-messiah or god. But if they're serious, then, I am who I am.

I want to spy on all sorts of places, and the box is a portable hole that occurred to me under the circumstances, it being impossible to punch holes throughout the world.

The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.

If we think of the field as being removed, there is no 'space' which remains, since space does not have an independent existence.

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis.

We want to be first; not first if, not first but; but first!

Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts.

One of the most powerful defences the media can offer for controversial actions is, of course, public interest.