Stephen Sondheim Quotes - Page 6

I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.

Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

I was watching him crawl, Back over the wall-! Then bang! Crash! And the lightning flash! And- well, that's another story, Never mind- Anyway.

The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.

It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.

With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.

It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people.

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.

They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.

When I listen to my work, I think, what's so inflammatory about it? It's not really that dissonant. A lot of people who used to hate my stuff have come round to it.

Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

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.

Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.

My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

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.

My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It's my mother's ambition to be a celebrity.

Only capitalists get photographers.

So here's to the girls on the go Everybody tries. Look into their eyes, And you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch, The dinosaurs surviving the crunch. Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch Everybody rise!