Stephen Sondheim Quotes
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A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
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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.
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Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
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Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
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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.
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The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
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Automobile in America,Chromium steel in America,Wire-spoke wheel in America,Very big deal in America!Immigrant goes to America,Many hellos in America,Nobody knows in America,Puerto Rico's in America!I like the shores of America!Comfort is yours in America!Knobs on the doors in America!Wall-to-wall floors in America!
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I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
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Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
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I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
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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.
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Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.
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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.
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Music is structure out of Chaos
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Gotta watch out for directors.
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To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
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Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you dont 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 youre making art.
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So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
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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.
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I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
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My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
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It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.
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I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oh if life were made of moments Even now and then a bad one--! But if life were only moments, Then you'd never know you had one.
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The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
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