Top 100 Sondheim's Quotes
#1. I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.
Charles Busch
#2. 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
#3. I'd never even sung in the shower, I'm too mortified. But once I got over the initial fear it was kind of enjoyable. Sondheim's melodies and lyrics are a real pleasure to tromp around in, it's really beautiful stuff.
Johnny Depp
#4. I think one of my favorite productions ever was Sondheim's 'Assassins' at the Roundabout in 2004. Beyond brilliant.
Robert Lopez
#5. The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
Stephen Sondheim
#6. No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.
Bernadette Peters
#7. 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
#8. Unless the object of the singer's affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is unphotogenic. Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate '-enic' rhymes are hard to come by.
Stephen Sondheim
#9. The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
Stephen Sondheim
#10. Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution
Stephen Sondheim
#11. 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
#12. Into the woods you go again You have to every now and then Into the woods, no telling when Be ready for the journey Into the woods, each time you go There's more to learn of what you know.
Stephen Sondheim
#13. Sondheim writes the music and lyrics, and because he's so smart and goes so deep with his feelings, there's a lot to explore, get involved with and learn about.
Bernadette Peters
#14. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#15. A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection ... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.
Stephen Sondheim
#16. There's a hole in the world like a big black pit who are filled with people who are filled with shit.
Stephen Sondheim
#17. I'm a devotee of Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius.
Kenneth Branagh
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
Stephen Sondheim
#22. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
Stephen Sondheim
#30. 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
#31. If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.
Stephen Sondheim
#32. I was watching him crawl,
Back over the wall-!
Then bang! Crash!
And the lightning flash!
And- well, that's another story,
Never mind-
Anyway ...
Stephen Sondheim
#33. Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player."
That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player."
How can you tell?"
It's PIPING hot!"
Then blow on it first!
Stephen Sondheim
#34. Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it's bad for the heart.
Stephen Sondheim
#35. It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.
Stephen Sondheim
#36. Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
Stephen Sondheim
#37. It's your father's fault that the curse got placed and the place got cursed in the first place.
Stephen Sondheim
#38. I love computers. I love writing on them. I love gadgetry. The thing is: I am a slow reader. So, if I am going to get my work done, I read, like, a newspaper and that's it. If I got into websites and the internet, I wouldn't get any work done.
Stephen Sondheim
#39. 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
#40. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#41. It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people.
Stephen Sondheim
#42. Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
Stephen Sondheim
#43. We lose things.
And then we choose things.
And there are Louis's
And there are Georges-
Well, Louis's
And George.
Stephen Sondheim
#44. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#45. If I got involved with the chat rooms and Facebook and everything - I would probably never leave. That's why I don't do it. I literally don't do it. At all.
Stephen Sondheim
#46. 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.
Stephen Sondheim
#47. You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
Stephen Sondheim
#48. For me it's more fun to find an unexpected moment for a character to sing when you don't expect them to.
Stephen Sondheim
#49. 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
#50. Let Pirelli's / Miracle Elixir / Activate your roots, sir ...
Keep it off your boots, sir- / Eats right through.
Yes, get Pirelli's! / Use a bottle of it! / Ladies seem to love it ...
Flies do, too!
Stephen Sondheim
#51. So here's to the girls on the go- Everybody tries Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch - The dinosaurs surviving the crunch - Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch - Everybody rise!
Stephen Sondheim
#52. Let the moment go ... Don't forget it for a moment, though. Just remembering you've had an "and" when you're back to "or" makes the "or" mean more than it did before ... Now I understand! And it's time to leave the woods.
Stephen Sondheim
#53. 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
#54. My experience with Sondheim has been nothing but glorious, especially for a guy who doesn't sing.
Johnny Depp
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
Stephen Sondheim
#59. 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
#60. 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
#62. My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.
Daniel Radcliffe
#63. In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
Mandy Patinkin
#64. Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.
Richard LaGravenese
#65. 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
#66. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. It takes almost as much imagination to justify what you write as it does to write it.
Stephen Sondheim
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. I don't think it's that I don't like Sondheim. It's that I find it really ... I don't know how to describe it. Doing it is the most extraordinary thing. Because it's like Shakespeare times 100 with singing. It's that satisfying - and that demanding.
Imelda Staunton
#78. Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
Stephen Sondheim
#79. 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
#80. I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
Stephen Sondheim
#82. 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
#83. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#88. It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.
Stephen Sondheim
#89. 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
#90. When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
Stephen Sondheim
#91. It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.
Stephen Sondheim
#92. 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
#94. I don't find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me.
Stephen Sondheim
#95. 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
#97. With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
Stephen Sondheim
#98. The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
Stephen Sondheim
#99. The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
Stephen Sondheim
#100. It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
Stephen Sondheim
