Stephen Sondheim Quotes - Page 4

The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.

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.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.

That's the trouble with awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you've been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing.

He came from a rock band and even though he was not a lead singer, I knew he was musical just from that. I also knew that he was intelligent enough from talking to him, that he would not play this part unless he could handle it vocally. I knew he was not about to get up there and have to have his voice dubbed or come off croaking. So Johnny Depp casted Johnny Depp. I trusted him entirely. I knew that he was no fool and he would only do it if he felt he could handle it. I told him to listen to the score carefully and if you can handle it, fine by me, and I was right.

Dreams are a sweet mistake All dreamers must awake On, then, with the dance No backward glance Or my heart will break Never look back.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn’t see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.

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

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.

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

I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.

Gotta watch out for directors.

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.

Everyone would like to be on Broadway, cause if a show works, you make a great deal of money and it allows you to write other shows.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit and the vermin of the world inhabit it and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit and it goes by the name of London. At the top of the hole sit the privileged few Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo turning beauty to filth and greed... I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders, for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru but there's no place like London!

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.

If the end is right, it justifies the beans!

I was never much of a reader. I'm a slow reader, which is unusual, because I'm so into language and I love words so much. But it's hard for me to read.

It's not so hard to be married, I've done it three or four times.

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.

Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome and heir to a throne?