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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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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
Play
Complete
Wait
Audience
Collaborator
Waiting
Collaborators
Lasts
Musicals
Last
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Comes
Plays
Also
Particularly

More quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.
Stephen Sondheim
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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
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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
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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
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On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
Stephen Sondheim
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My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
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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What justifies a character singing one idea for 3 minutes on the screen? I get impatient and want the story to carry on. I don't get impatient in the theatre.
Stephen Sondheim
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Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world, so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted.
Stephen Sondheim
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Everyone would like to be on Broadway, cause if a show works, you make a great deal of money and it allows you to write other shows.
Stephen Sondheim
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It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.
Stephen Sondheim
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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
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The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
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
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My cage has many rooms.
Stephen Sondheim
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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
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To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.
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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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim