Stephen Sondheim's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

Nice is different than good.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gotta watch out for directors.

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.

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

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

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

I would have been a geologist.

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

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.

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

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.