Stephen Sondheim Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von 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.

I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world.

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

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

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

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

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

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

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Stephen Sondheim

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

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 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

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

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

Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.

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

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

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

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

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

I would have been a geologist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

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

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

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 a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.

Stephen Sondheim

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

Stephen Sondheim