Quotes By Stephen Sondheim

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.

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.

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.

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?

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Nice is different than good.

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.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

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.

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.

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.

Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.

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

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

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

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

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.

Gotta watch out for directors.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.

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.

By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.

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.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.