American - Composer | March 22, 1930 -
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
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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.
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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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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.'
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I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
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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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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.
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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.
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In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
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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.
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When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
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My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.
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