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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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Stephen Sondheim
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: March 22
Author
Composer
Dramaturge
Librettist
Lyricist
Musician
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
New York City
New York
Stephen Joshua Sondheim
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Oscar
Often
Oscars
Father
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Didn
Bitter
Hammerstein
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More quotes by Stephen Sondheim
Art is craft, not inspiration.
Stephen Sondheim
Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
Stephen Sondheim
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.
Stephen Sondheim
Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
Stephen Sondheim
I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.
Stephen Sondheim
They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.
Stephen Sondheim
Lemuel Ayers had had a huge success producing and designing Kiss Me, Kate. He wanted to produce this as a musical. I got the job. It was a professional score.
Stephen Sondheim
I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
Stephen Sondheim
If I cannot fly, let me sing.
Stephen Sondheim
Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
Stephen Sondheim
You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
Stephen Sondheim
Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.
Stephen Sondheim
Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.
Stephen Sondheim
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
You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
Stephen Sondheim
You get used to the exact amount of space between lines. You write a word and then you write an alternate word over it. You want enough room so you can read it, so the lines can't be too close.
Stephen Sondheim
It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.
Stephen Sondheim
Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
Stephen Sondheim
Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey.
Stephen Sondheim
I do not dwell on dreams I know how soon a dream becomes an expectation How can I have expectations? Look at me, No, Captain, Look at me, Look at me!
Stephen Sondheim
