Top 100 Quotes About Stephen Sondheim
#1. The thing about Stephen Schwartz is that, while it may be difficult to learn - it's a little bit like[Stephen] Sondheim; Sondheim is quite difficult to learn - but, once you have it in you: it never leaves you. It becomes some of your favorite music; it really does.
Kerry Ellis
#2. The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
Nancy Allen
#3. No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.
Bernadette Peters
#4. I am writing better Stephen Sondheim songs than even Stephen Sondheim is writing.
Pete Townshend
#5. To my mind, 'Dear Brutus' stands halfway between Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 'Into the Woods'. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality.
Michael Dirda
#6. I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.
Kenneth Branagh
#7. I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.
Charles Busch
#8. My favorite show tune has got to be Stephen Sondheim's "I Remember Sky." It's probably the saddest song of all time I sing it to myself in the mirror. No, I am kidding. That's the joke.
Laura Benanti
#9. If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in 'A Little Night Music' - Oh my, it is perfection. The character gets to be funny, beautiful, sexy and smart all at the same time and have two men fighting over her. The show is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best ... need I say more?
Nancy Allen
#10. Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.
Bernadette Peters
#11. I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.
Laura Lippman
#12. I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.
Christoph Waltz
#13. Hey, old friend. What do you say, old friend? Make it okay, old friend, Give an old friendship a break. Why so grim? We're going on forever. You, me, him - too many lives are at stake ... - STEPHEN SONDHEIM, OLD FRIENDS
Neil Gaiman
#15. Stephen Sondheim said : If you know where you're going, you've gone. Move on.
Jennifer Crusie
#16. Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Tom Shales
#17. I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can't analyze humor. You just have to get through it.
Elaine Stritch
#18. I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.
Cornel West
#19. 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
#20. I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.
Stephen Sondheim
#21. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#22. Puzzles are like songs - A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
Stephen Sondheim
#23. It takes almost as much imagination to justify what you write as it does to write it.
Stephen Sondheim
#24. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#25. 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
#26. 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
#29. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#31. Bit by bit, putting it together ...
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just the vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution,
Putting it together, that's what counts.
Stephen Sondheim
#32. For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
Stephen Sondheim
#34. I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
Stephen Sondheim
#35. Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world, so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted.
Stephen Sondheim
#36. 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 NEVER LOOK BACK ... Follies
Stephen Sondheim
#37. Into the woods
you have to grope,
But that's the way you learn to cope.
Into the woods to find there's hope
Of getting through the journey.
Stephen Sondheim
#38. It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
Stephen Sondheim
#39. The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
Stephen Sondheim
#40. The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
Stephen Sondheim
#41. With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
Stephen Sondheim
#43. 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
#44. I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me.
Stephen Sondheim
#46. 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
#47. It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.
Stephen Sondheim
#48. When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
Stephen Sondheim
#49. It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.
Stephen Sondheim
#51. Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.
Stephen Sondheim
#52. 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
#54. 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
#55. I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
Stephen Sondheim
#57. I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
Stephen Sondheim
#58. You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.
Stephen Sondheim
#59. Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
Stephen Sondheim
#60. No one has ever loved me
As deeply as you.
No one has truly shown me
What love could be like until now:
Not pretty or safe or easy
But more than I ever knew.
Love within reason -
That isn't love.
And I've learned that from you..
Stephen Sondheim
#61. Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'
Stephen Sondheim
#62. You get used to the exact amount of space between lines. You write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can't be too close.
Stephen Sondheim
#63. The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff.
Stephen Sondheim
#64. The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together,/ That keep marriage in tact.
Stephen Sondheim
#67. Teaching is a sacred profession. And art is a form of teaching.
Stephen Sondheim
#68. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#70. I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world.
Stephen Sondheim
#71. When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.
Stephen Sondheim
#73. If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you're too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you're not a very good pianist, you're limited to the same patterns.
Stephen Sondheim
#74. I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
Stephen Sondheim
#76. I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
Stephen Sondheim
#77. If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
Stephen Sondheim
#78. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#79. Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
Stephen Sondheim
#80. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#81. Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.
Stephen Sondheim
#82. Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
Stephen Sondheim
#83. Anything that is white is sweet.
Anything that is brown is meat.
Anything that is grey, don't eat.
Stephen Sondheim
#84. They all deserve to die.
Even you, Mrs. Lovett
Even I.
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death would be relief.
Stephen Sondheim
#85. No one has ever known me as clearly as you. No one has ever shown me that love allows everything. Not pretty or safe or easy but something I never knew. Love within reason, that isn't love and I learned that from you.
Stephen Sondheim
#86. Can't we just pursue our lives With our children and our wives Till that happy day arrives How do you ignore All the witches All the curses All the wolves, all the lies The false hopes, the goodbyes ...
Stephen Sondheim
#87. Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see ...
Stephen Sondheim
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
Stephen Sondheim
#94. There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.
Stephen Sondheim
#95. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#97. Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.
Stephen Sondheim
#98. 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
#99. After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Stephen Sondheim
