Stephen Sondheim Quotes

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

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

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.

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

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

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

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.

I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.

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

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

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

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.

The only reason to write is from love.

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.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

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

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.

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

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

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

The art of making art, is putting it together.

My main goal is to tell a story.

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.

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