Stephen Sondheim Quotes

“I was raised to be charming, not sincere.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Musical comedies aren’t written, they are rewritten.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“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

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“I’m always conscious of what I’m writing, conscious of what the actor may ask me. I have a defense for nearly every line in the song.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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

“Everybody faces a blank piece of paper, no matter what they’ve written or painted or composed before. I can’t imagine approaching every single new project with-without doubt.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“If people have split views about your work, I think it’s flattering. I’d rather have them feel something about it than dismiss it.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“There’s something inimical about the camera and song.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I would have been a geologist.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Every writer I’ve ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“I think ‘lunch’ is one of the funniest words in the world.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“When I’m writing a song, I try to be the character.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I was a mathematician by nature, and still am – I just knew I didn’t want to be a mathematician. So I decided not to take any mathematics courses.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I have, by nature, an analytical mind.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that’s the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I played the organ when I went to military school, when I was 10. They had a huge organ, the second-largest pipe organ in New York State. I loved all the buttons and the gadgets. I’ve always been a gadget man.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn’t see my own father.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“My mother wanted me off her hands. She was a working woman. She designed clothes, and she was a celebrity collector. It’s my mother’s ambition to be a celebrity.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Gotta watch out for directors.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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

“I really don’t want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.”

― Stephen Sondheim

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

― Stephen Sondheim

“In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I don’t listen to recordings of my songs. I don’t avoid it, I just don’t go out of my way to do it.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you’re not aware there was a writer there.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“If you’re dealing with a musical in which you’re trying to tell a story, it’s got to sound like speech. At the same time it’s got to be a song.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“You can’t have personal investors anymore because it’s too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn’t.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Nice is different than good.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?”

― Stephen Sondheim

“My idea of heaven is not writing.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“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.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“When the song is part of the action and working as dialogue, even two minutes is way too long.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“My parents weren’t around much, but I assumed everybody’s family was the same. I didn’t know people had mummies and daddies who would give them milk and cookies after school. I just thought everybody lived on Central Park West and they had a nanny to take care of them.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Every single song I’ve ever written is sung by a character created by somebody else. Some might have a jaundiced view of love, some don’t. But none of these songs is me singing – not a single one.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from ‘Oedipus’ to ‘Hamlet.’”

― Stephen Sondheim

“Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don’t feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you’re making art.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“If you force yourself to write away from the piano, you come up with more inventive things. If you’re too good a piano player, as some composers are, the music may become flavorless and glib. And if you’re not a very good pianist, you’re limited to the same patterns.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I have inherited my father’s sense of humour about myself. It’s a lot more pleasant to make fun of yourself than when someone else does.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I’m very opinionated about movie musicals when they’re adapted from live shows. You’ll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone’s eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I don’t find my life that interesting. The shows, maybe. But not me.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I’m a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.”

― Stephen Sondheim

“I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway.”

― Stephen Sondheim