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I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.

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
Whole
Theater
Feel
Laughing
Feels
Audience
Much
Getting
Love
Idea
Paramount
Making
Cry
Music
Across
Ideas
Laugh

More quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
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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.
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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
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I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.
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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.
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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
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I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.
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A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.
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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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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.
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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.
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Bit by bit, putting it together... Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, Every little detail plays a part. Having just the vision's no solution, Everything depends on execution, Putting it together, that's what counts.
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You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
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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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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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It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
Stephen Sondheim
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The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
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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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Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
Stephen Sondheim
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Into the woods you go again You have to every now and then Into the woods, no telling when Be ready for the journey Into the woods, each time you go There's more to learn of what you know.
Stephen Sondheim