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Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

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
Song
Cast
Shows
Extremely
Wells
Casts
Well
Connected
Songs
Playing
Almost
Show

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When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
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Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.
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Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
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By the time I get through writing a score, I know the book better than the book writer does, because I've examined every word, and questioned the book writer on every word.
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The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
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Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.
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White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.
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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.
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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.
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Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player. That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player. How can you tell? It's PIPING hot! Then blow on it first!
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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.
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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.
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I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
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I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.
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My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
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