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All Stephen Sondheim Quotes
If people have split views about your work, I think it's flattering. I'd rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.
Stephen Sondheim
61% of people like this quote
Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.
Stephen Sondheim
59% of people like this quote
One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.
Stephen Sondheim
59% of people like this quote
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
58% of people like this quote
When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.
Stephen Sondheim
57% of people like this quote
Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
Stephen Sondheim
57% of people like this quote
Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.
Stephen Sondheim
57% of people like this quote
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.
Stephen Sondheim
56% of people like this quote
I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
Stephen Sondheim
56% of people like this quote
I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
Stephen Sondheim
56% of people like this quote
Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
Stephen Sondheim
56% of people like this quote
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
Stephen Sondheim
55% of people like this quote
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.
Stephen Sondheim
55% of people like this quote
The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.
Stephen Sondheim
55% of people like this quote
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
55% of people like this quote
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