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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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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
Easy
Clearly
Reason
Safe
Ever
Learned
Everything
Learning
Something
Pretty
Never
Knew
Love
Within
Shown
Known
Allows

More quotes by 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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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
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You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.
Stephen Sondheim
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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
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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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I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
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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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 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
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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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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat.
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.
Stephen Sondheim
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I like neurotic people. I like troubled people. Not that I don't like squared-away people, but I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Stephen Sondheim
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Oh if life were made of moments Even now and then a bad one--! But if life were only moments, Then you'd never know you had one.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
Stephen Sondheim
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Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
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