A Quote by Stephen Sondheim

I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.
When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.
Some of the songs are inspired by personal things that have happened. Others have been inspired by other people's stories, you know, like someone that witnesses something and so I tell the story through my own eyes. And some songs are just about how I feel about the world and others about the places that we have travelled to.
I try to tell the best story, and the story that has some heart and some genuine terror and some social commentary and some comedy and some romance and some sex and some violence.
Language is never fully trustworthy, but when it comes to eating animals, words are as often used to misdirect and camouflage as they are to communicate. Some words, like veal, help us forget what we are actually talking about. Some, like free-range, can mislead those whose consciences seek clarification. Some, like happy, mean the opposite of what they would seem. And some, like natural, mean next to nothing.
In some songs, like propaganda songs-and don't get me wrong, I love some propaganda songs. They're some of my favorite songs in the world. It's just that I don't enjoy writing it.
The thing about Depeche songs is that they’re so descriptive. For me, they tell some kind of story about a character who’s trying to redeem himself or to find something to believe in-some kind of faith or hope.
The term 'popular culture' always used to mean what the people do - pop songs, folk songs, music in general used to live because people would sing these songs and tell these stories together. Then all of these new technologies came out and it became the work of professionals.
There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything's a story, everyone's got stories, we're perceiving stories, we're interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what's the right way to tell a particular story.
You become a monk and you practice and the teacher tells you what to do. If you find that you have a resistance to that, and the resistance is strong, it just means you're not interested. Why put yourself through some sort of torture. It means you weren't that interested.
Maybe some people that only listen to electronic music will pick up my record and get turned on to some of the story songs, some of the more country-type stuff.
I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
It's all about this abstract entity called the story. It's all about the best way to tell the story, and to make a movie about the issues that this story is about. Filmmaking is storytelling, for me.
That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs.
I think you tell the story that has to be told. You tell the story that's the truth. You tell the story that readers will be interested in and should know about.
I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.
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