Quote

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing 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
Wanted
Lyrics
Firsts
Meet
First
Songs
Writing
Song
Really
Write
Always
Didn
Music
Bernstein
Reason
Leonard

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Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
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Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.
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I've always liked puzzles, since I was a kid. I like party games, silly games. I loved chess. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, but I'm not particularly visual.
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I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to 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'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
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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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Let the moment go. . . . Don't forget it for a moment, though. Just remembering you've had an and when you're back to or makes the or mean more than it did before. . . . Now I understand! And it's time to leave the woods.
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TODD: The history of the world, my love -- LOVETT: Save a lot of graves, Do a lot of relatives favors! TODD: Is those below serving those up above! LOVETT: Ev'rybody shaves, So there should be plenty of flavors! TODD: How gratifying for once to know BOTH: That those above will serve those down below!
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The man i'll never be, Who remembers him?
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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.
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I'm sure many writers have these strange, tiny little habits.
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Only capitalists get photographers.
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So here's to the girls on the go Everybody tries. Look into their eyes, And you'll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch, The dinosaurs surviving the crunch. Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch Everybody rise!
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Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.
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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.
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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.
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I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
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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.
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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.
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