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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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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
Much
Like

More quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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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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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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Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.
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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The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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Gotta watch out for directors.
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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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
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The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
Stephen Sondheim
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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
Stephen Sondheim
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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My main goal is to tell a story.
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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Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
Stephen Sondheim
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I was watching him crawl, Back over the wall-! Then bang! Crash! And the lightning flash! And- well, that's another story, Never mind- Anyway.
Stephen Sondheim
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It's pleasanter to work in the country, where you can wander out among the trees. But I don't get as much work done. In the city you don't want to leave the room because there's all that chaos going on.
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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Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.
Stephen Sondheim
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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