Top 196 Quotes & Sayings by Stephen Sondheim - Page 2

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

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.

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.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

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.

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

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

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

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.

Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.

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.

I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

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.

Content dictates form and style.

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.

Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.

Best to take the moment present as a present for the moment. . .

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.

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.

Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul but it's bad for the heart.

The only reason to write is from love.

The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!

I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.

The last collaborator is your audience ... when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well -- work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece -- suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

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.

Sometimes people leave you Halfway through the wood Others may decieve you You decide what's good You decide alone But no one is alone

Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution

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.

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may decieve you - you decide what's good. You decide alone, but no one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Fight for their mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good.

Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.

Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

My main goal is to tell a story.

You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture.

White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.

Teaching is a sacred profession. And art is a form of teaching.

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.

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.

Music is structure out of Chaos

You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.

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.

What justifies a character singing one idea for 3 minutes on the screen? I get impatient and want the story to carry on. I don't get impatient in the theatre.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.

If I cannot fly, let me sing.

White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.

Stay a child while you can be a child.

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

Just remember, Someone is on your side (our side) Someone else is not While we're seeing our side Maybe we forgot: they are not alone. No one is alone.

It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.

Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.

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.

Writing is a form of mischief.

The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.

Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.

Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.

The art of making art, is putting it together.

Ah, but if you have no expectations, You can never have a disappointment.

The man i'll never be, Who remembers him?