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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.
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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Poetry
More quotes by Stephen Sondheim
Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat.
Stephen Sondheim
My main goal is to tell a story.
Stephen Sondheim
For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
Stephen Sondheim
The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
Stephen Sondheim
I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
Stephen Sondheim
Sometimes people leave you Halfway through the wood Others may decieve you You decide what's good You decide alone But no one is alone
Stephen Sondheim
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
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
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
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.
Stephen Sondheim
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
So here's to the girls on the go Everybody tries. Look into their eyes, And you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch, The dinosaurs surviving the crunch. Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch Everybody rise!
Stephen Sondheim
I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.
Stephen Sondheim
Take a play that you like but you think is flawed, and see if you can improve it and turn it into a musical. [...] Then make up your own story.
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
I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
Stephen Sondheim
There's a hole in the world Like a great black pit And the vermin of the world Inhabit it ... And it goes by the name of London.
Stephen Sondheim
Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.
Stephen Sondheim
Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.
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
