Top 82 Quotes & Sayings by Alan Menken - Page 2

When I first started working at Disney animation, I can't tell you how many people said to me, 'Oh, man, take a powder.' Nobody takes animated musicals seriously. I swear.

Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm and, I think, should elicit an emotion of happiness or of celebration or of sadness or of sorrow or of love or laughter, whatever.

I have an awards cabinet in my studio where I keep my eight Oscars, my 11 Grammys, my seven Golden Globes, and my Tony Award.

I'm a very style-driven composer, and I like to give every project its own unique stamp.

What I look for in a partner is a skill, a voice of their own so I have a strength to go up against. They definitely have to be able to get out of their own way. I can't take somebody being precious about their work.

I'll always work with my collaborator in the room so I have a reaction on a note-by-note basis. I know in my gut when something works for me, and I'll fight for it, but I'm a very easy re-writer.

In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It's a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more.

I was always proud of the score to 'Newsies.' The movie is good, but it was under-budgeted.

Movies, there are moments when you're writing a song or demoing, a moment in the recording studio. Musicals much more just eat up your life for a certain period of time.

I always felt great about what I wrote for 'Newsies,' but 'Newsies' was a total flop.

Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn't normally want to go in. It's not something I fight at all.

The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that's very much being a child.

I'm an architect. Before you start pouring the concrete, you build a foundation that is solid so that when you take the scaffolding down, it holds - forever. So that when junior high schools are doing 'Hunchback,' a 12-year-old as Frollo still works on some level.

When Peter Schneider first approached me about adapting 'Sister Act' for the stage, it wasn't a slam dunk to say yes.

TV is a medium where I've been an outsider for the most part.

I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

If you write enough musicals you pretty much have a sense of where they should go, what you'll need, and when; how to pull people on that journey.

Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.

The best parts about writing a show are [its] first, second and 10th anniversaries. Everything else is relative levels of hell.

What brought me to Disney was the new regime, which is now the old regime, came over with Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and all these people really wanted to reinvigorate the animated musical, so they came to Howard Ashman and me. That was my entry into Disney.

Whether it's animated, whether it's live-action, whether it's Broadway, whether it's television, a musical is a musical is a musical. So, pretty much you approach the songs in pretty much the same way. The difference might be that in a film you have a close up. On stage you don't. So there are more songs on the stage because the songs are kind of the close up.

Having a tradition is a great thing to work within, and maybe today [it] is the only way to really land musically dramatic work.