Quotes By Stephen Sondheim

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

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.

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

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.

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

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

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

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

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

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.

Gotta watch out for directors.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.

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.

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

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.