Quotes By Stephen Sondheim

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

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.

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

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

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

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

The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.

Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.

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

Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My idea of heaven is not writing.

I would have been a geologist.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.

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

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.

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.

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.

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.

The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

Nice is different than good.