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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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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
Sides
Public
Story
Tonys
Stories
Gypsy
Kind
Humiliation
Ignored
West
Side

More quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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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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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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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.
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I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
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Slotted spoons don't hold much soup.
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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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Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat.
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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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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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They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.
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Let Pirelli's / Miracle Elixir / Activate your roots, sir... Keep it off your boots, sir- / Eats right through. Yes, get Pirelli's! / Use a bottle of it! / Ladies seem to love it... Flies do, too!
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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.
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If I got involved with the chat rooms and Facebook and everything - I would probably never leave. That's why I don't do it. I literally don't do it. At all.
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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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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.
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Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
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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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Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey.
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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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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
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