Stephen Sondheim Quotes
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film.
(1930 - )
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A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
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After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
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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.
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Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
[Art]
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By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
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Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
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Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
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Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
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Gotta watch out for directors.
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I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
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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.
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I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
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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.
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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.
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I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
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I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
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I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
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I would have been a geologist.
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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.
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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.
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