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Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Quotes (110)

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Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.
Stephen Sondheim
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Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
Stephen Sondheim
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Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
Stephen Sondheim
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By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.
Stephen Sondheim
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Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player. That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player. How can you tell? It's PIPING hot! Then blow on it first!
Stephen Sondheim
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With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
Stephen Sondheim
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Only capitalists get photographers.
Stephen Sondheim
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I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
Stephen Sondheim
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My main goal is to tell a story.
Stephen Sondheim
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No one has ever known me as clearly as you. No one has ever shown me that love allows everything. Not pretty or safe or easy but something I never knew. Love within reason, that isn't love and I learned that from you.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
Stephen Sondheim
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Let the moment go. . . . Don't forget it for a moment, though. Just remembering you've had an and when you're back to or makes the or mean more than it did before. . . . Now I understand! And it's time to leave the woods.
Stephen Sondheim
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I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
Stephen Sondheim
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The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.
Stephen Sondheim
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Just remember, Someone is on your side (our side) Someone else is not While we're seeing our side Maybe we forgot: they are not alone. No one is alone.
Stephen Sondheim
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White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.
Stephen Sondheim
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Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.
Stephen Sondheim
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Dreams are a sweet mistake All dreamers must awake On, then, with the dance No backward glance Or my heart will break Never look back.
Stephen Sondheim
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Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn’t see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.
Stephen Sondheim
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Puzzles are like songs - A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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