Sondheim Songs Quotes

#1. I am writing better Stephen Sondheim songs than even Stephen Sondheim is writing.

Pete Townshend

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

Stephen Sondheim

#3. 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.

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

#5. I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.

Stephen Sondheim

#6. Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

Stephen Sondheim

#7. One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.

Mahatma Gandhi

#8. I know a lot of reporters certainly will go to jail to defend confidential sources. Some have even gone to jail for an issue like this. But I can't say that's the norm.

Floyd Abrams

#9. The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of superstition.

Plutarch

#10. 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.

Stephen Sondheim

#11. (Franklin and, by extension, the Junto were particularly fond of things that could help the public as well as themselves.)

Walter Isaacson

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. She was so tired of being considered disposable.

Kristin Hannah

#15. In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.

PJ Harvey

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

Stephen Sondheim

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. Are you up to your destiny?

William Shakespeare

#20. Tugs used to think that everyone's name was in the dictionary, and when she had realized it was only hers, both Tugs and Button, she felt suddenly fond and possessive of it, as if this book were put here for her guidance alone.

Anne Ylvisaker

#21. 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

#22. It had been a couple of years and I was neither dead, nor undead, which I ranked as an achievement.

Mark Henwick

#23. My mother told me once that, a long time ago, there were people who wouldn't buy genetically engineered produce because they viewed it as unnatural. Now we have no other option.

Veronica Roth

#24. I grew up babysitting and always enjoyed it. I love family. A couple of my closest friends have kids, and I'm their godfather, and that's one of my greatest pleasures in life, just picking them up from school and hanging out with them.

Matthew Perry

#25. As I grow older and meet more and more people, I realise how lucky I am to have had a stable family environment. Both my parents had loving families but unstable upbringings, so they wanted us to have a more stable situation.

Jamie Cullum

#26. 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

#27. 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