Stephen Sondheim Quotes

Bit by bit, putting it together... Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, Every little detail plays a part. Having just the vision's no solution, Everything depends on execution, Putting it together, that's what counts.

If I cannot fly, let me sing.

Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.

The only reason to write is from love.

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.

Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.

Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.

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.

Swing your razor wide! Sweeney, hold it to the skies!

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.

You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture.

The last collaborator is your audience ... when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well -- work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece -- suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!

Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.

Best to take the moment present as a present for the moment. . .

The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.

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.

You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.

Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood. Others may decieve you - you decide what's good. You decide alone, but no one is alone. People make mistakes. Fathers, mothers, people make mistakes, holding to their own, thinking they're alone. Honor their mistakes. Fight for their mistakes. Witches can be right. Giants can be good. You decide what's right. You decide what's good.

If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

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.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.

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.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.

Just remember, Someone is on your side (our side) Someone else is not While we're seeing our side Maybe we forgot: they are not alone. No one is alone.

It's not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.

The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.

Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.

Art is craft, not inspiration.

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.

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.

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.

The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.

Stay a child while you can be a child.

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

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.

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!

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.

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.

Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.

Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.