Stephen Sondheim Quotes

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Stephen Sondheim

Profession : Composer

Birth : March 22, 1930

Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they've written or painted or composed before. I can't imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.

Stephen Sondheim

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Stephen Sondheim

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

Stephen Sondheim

Gotta watch out for directors.

Stephen Sondheim

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

Stephen Sondheim

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.

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

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

Stephen Sondheim

I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.

Stephen Sondheim

I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.

Stephen Sondheim

Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!

Stephen Sondheim

The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

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.

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

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

Nice is different than good.

Stephen Sondheim

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

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

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