Quotes By Stephen Sondheim
I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I've always been a gadget man.
Stephen Sondheim
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
After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Stephen Sondheim
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
I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
Stephen Sondheim
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
Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
Stephen Sondheim
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Stephen Sondheim
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
The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
Stephen Sondheim
When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
Stephen Sondheim
Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
Stephen Sondheim
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
Stephen Sondheim
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
Stephen Sondheim
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
The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
Stephen Sondheim
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