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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
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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
Great
Pits
Like
Hole
World
Holes
London
Goes
Sweeney
Name
Londoners
Names
Vermin
Black
Inhabit
More quotes by 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
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
Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
Stephen Sondheim
Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
Stephen Sondheim
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
That's the trouble with awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you've been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing.
Stephen Sondheim
My main goal is to tell a story.
Stephen Sondheim
It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
Stephen Sondheim
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
You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
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
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
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
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 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
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
With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
Stephen Sondheim
Only capitalists get photographers.
Stephen Sondheim
Gotta watch out for directors.
Stephen Sondheim
I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
Stephen Sondheim