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A Song Is Such A Short Form ... That 'the Slightest Flaw Seems Like A Mountain.' And So Every Song Needs To Be Revised 'til It's Close To Perfection... But Achieving Perfection Takes A Lot Of Energy.

-Stephen Sondheim

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A Song Is Such

Stephen Sondheim

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A Song Is Such A Short Form ... That 'the Slightest Flaw Seems Like A Mountain.' And So Every Song Needs To Be Revised 'til It's Close To Perfection... But Achieving Perfection Takes A Lot Of Energy.

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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.

I Was Watching Him Crawl, Back Over The Wall-! Then Bang! Crash! And The Lightning Flash! And- Well, That's Another Story, Never Mind- Anyway.

When I Listen To My Work, I Think, What's So Inflammatory About It? It's Not Really That Dissonant. A Lot Of People Who Used To Hate My Stuff Have Come Round To It.

The More Restrictions You Have, The Easier Anything Is To Write.

Can't We Just Pursue Our Lives With Our Children And Our Wives Till That Happy Day Arrives How Do You Ignore All The Witches All The Curses All The Wolves, All The Lies The False Hopes, The Goodbyes . . .

You May Know What You Need, But To Get What You Want, Better See That You Keep What You Have.

I Do Not Hope For What I Cannot Have! I Do Not Cling To Things I Cannot Keep!

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.

Tonight, Tonight, Won't Be Just Any Night. Tonight There Will Be No Morning Star.

Musical Comedies Aren't Written, They Are Rewritten.

They All Deserve To Die. Even You, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because The Lives Of The Wicked Should Be Made Brief For The Rest Of Us Death Would Be Relief.

No One Has Ever Known Me As Clearly As You. No One Has Ever Shown Me That Love Allows Everything. Not Pretty Or Safe Or Easy But Something I Never Knew. Love Within Reason, That Isn't Love And I Learned That From You.

Best To Take The Moment Present As A Present For The Moment. . .

Everyone I Used To Play With Has Either Given Up Or Is Dead.

Any Moment, Big Or Small, Is A Moment, After All. Seize The Moment, Skies May Fall Any Moment.

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.

I Started Listening To Classical Music When I Was In My Early Teens. Prior To That, I Listened To Pop Records Or Band Records.

Friendship, Obligation And Greed Are Not Good Enough Reasons To Write Anything.

Not Good Enough

After The Rodgers And Hammerstein Revolution, Songs Became Part Of The Story, As Opposed To Just Entertainments In Between Comedy Scenes.

It's Age. It's A Diminution Of Energy And The Worry That There Are No New Ideas. It's An Increasing Lack Of Confidence. I'm Not The Only One. I've Checked With Other People.

It's Pleasanter To Work In The Country, Where You Can Wander Out Among The Trees. But I Don't Get As Much Work Done. In The City You Don't Want To Leave The Room Because There's All That Chaos Going On.

The More You Cling To Things, The More You Love Them, The More The Pain You Suffer, When They're Taken From You.

Johnny Depp's Performance Is Quite Remarkable. Sweeney's Desire For Revenge And The Simmering Anger And Hurt That He Feels Carry The Story Forward, And Johnny Finds The Most Remarkable Variety Within That Narrow Set Of Emotions. The Intensity Is At A Boil All The Time And He Never Drops It. It's Real Anger.

Sometimes Colleagues In Performance Are Absolutely Astonishing.

That's The Trouble With Awards For A Body Of Work. They Always Come At Both A Good Time And A Wrong Time. Good Because They Tell You What You've Been Doing Was Worth The Doing And Wrong Because They Ought To Come When You're Young And Excited And Hungry For Assurance That What You're Doing Is Worth The Doing.

So Here's To The Girls On The Go Everybody Tries. Look Into Their Eyes, And You'll See What They Know: Everybody Dies. A Toast To That Invincible Bunch, The Dinosaurs Surviving The Crunch. Let's Hear It For The Ladies Who Lunch Everybody Rise!

I Don't Write Songs Apart From Theatrical Pieces. I'm Not Interested In Writing Songs Qua Songs.

Oh If Life Were Made Of Moments Even Now And Then A Bad One--! But If Life Were Only Moments, Then You'd Never Know You Had One.

By The Time I Get Through Writing A Score, I Know The Book Better Than The Book Writer Does, Because I've Examined Every Word, And Questioned The Book Writer On Every Word.

Ah, But If You Have No Expectations, You Can Never Have A Disappointment.

I Took Piano Lessons When I Was 6. I Didn't Want To Go On With It. I Don't Remember Being Moved By A Piece Of Music.

Making Lyrics Feel Natural, Sit On Music In Such A Way That You Dont 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 Youre Making Art.

I've Always Liked Puzzles, Since I Was A Kid. I Like Party Games, Silly Games. I Loved Chess. I Enjoy Jigsaw Puzzles, But I'm Not Particularly Visual.

It's Not So Hard To Be Married, I've Done It Three Or Four Times.

Stay A Child While You Can Be A Child.

My Parents Got Divorced And Military School Gave Me A Structure. A Lot Of Kids My Age Were Children Of Divorced Parents. They Didn't Know What To Do With The Kids.

The Man I'll Never Be, Who Remembers Him?

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.

The Concerts You Enjoy Together/ Neighbors You Annoy Together/ Children You Destroy Together,/ That Keep Marriage In Tact.

I Get Some Flak For And Some Resistance From Colleagues For Because I'm Interested In Storytelling. I Mean What I Like About Songwriting Is Songs Used To Tell A Story.

Perpetual Anticipation Is Good For The Soul But It's Bad For The Heart.

Oscar Hammerstein Was A Surrogate Father. I Liked My Father A Lot, He Was A Swell Fellow, But I Didn’t See Him Very Often Because My Mother Was Bitter About Him And Did Everything She Could To Prevent Me From Seeing Him.

I'm Sure Many Writers Have These Strange, Tiny Little Habits.

Sometimes I'll Ask The Book Writer To Write A Monologue, Not To Be Performed, Just As If They Were Notes For The Character.

Pointillism Takes Emotional Images, Character, Etc., And Makes Them All Come Together And Make A Whole That Tells A Story.

When The Audience Comes In, It Changes The Temperature Of What You've Written.

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.

Murder Mysteries

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.

A Close-up On Screen Can Say All A Song Can.

Content Dictates Form And Style.

Math And Music Are Intimately Related. Not Necessarily On A Conscious Level, But Sure.

Over A Period Of Time It's Been Driven Home To Me That I'm Not Going To Be The Most Popular Writer In The World, So I'm Always Happy When Anything In Any Way Is Accepted.

I Really Don't Want To Write A Score Until The Whole Show Is Cast And Staged.

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.

What Justifies A Character Singing One Idea For 3 Minutes On The Screen? I Get Impatient And Want The Story To Carry On. I Don't Get Impatient In The Theatre.

You're So Nice. You're Not Good, You're Not Bad, You're Just Nice. I'm Not Good, I'm Not Nice, I'm Just Right. I'm The Witch. You're The World.

I'm A Lazy Writer. My Idea Of Heaven Is Not Writing. On The Other Hand, I'm Obviously Compulsive About It.

The Tonys Ignored West Side Story. The Tonys Ignored Gypsy. It's A Kind Of Public Humiliation.

Opportunity Is Not A Lengthy Visitor.

I Read To See Myself In Other People's Lives.

Work Is What You Do For Others, Liebchen. Art Is What You Do For Yourself.

I'm Interested In The Theater Because I'm Interested In Communication With Audiences. Otherwise I Would Be In Concert Music.

There's Something Inimical About The Camera And Song.

I Prefer Neurotic People. I Like To Hear Rumblings Beneath The Surface.

Beneath The Surface

It Should Be Interesting To See Two Entirely Different Ways To Treat A Story, Geared For Two Entirely Different Kinds Of Audience.

Writing Is A Form Of Mischief.

Two Of The Hardest Words In The Language To Rhyme Are Life And Love. Of All Words!

Nice Is Different Than Good.

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.

For Me It's More Fun To Find An Unexpected Moment For A Character To Sing When You Don't Expect Them To.

Take A Play That You Like But You Think Is Flawed, And See If You Can Improve It And Turn It Into A Musical. [...] Then Make Up Your Own Story.

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.

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.

When I Was Growing Up, There Was No Such Thing As Off-broadway. You Either Got Your Show On Or You Didn't.

It's Not So Much Do What You Like As It Is That You Like What You Do.

Almost All The Shows I've Been Connected With Have Been Extremely Well Cast. They're Playing The Show, Not Just Doing The Songs.

Only Capitalists Get Photographers.

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

If I Cannot Fly, Let Me Sing.

So Many Good Songs Get Written Fast, Because You Know Exactly What Has To Work.

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.

Careful The Spell You Cast, Not Just On Children. Sometimes The Spell May Last Past What You Can See And Turn Against You... Careful The Tale You Tell. That Is The Spell.

Am I Not Sensitive, Clever, Well-mannered, Considerate, Passionate, Charming, As Kind As I'm Handsome And Heir To A Throne?

Dreams Are A Sweet Mistake All Dreamers Must Awake On, Then, With The Dance No Backward Glance Or My Heart Will Break Never Look Back.

My Main Goal Is To Tell A Story.

I Didn't Really Want To Write Just Lyrics, But I Wanted To Meet Leonard Bernstein. Music Was Always The First Reason I Was Writing Songs.

Generally, The Best Recording Is The Original Cast, Because That's The Way The Piece Grew: Integrally, With Them.

The Difference Between A Cow And A Bean Is A Bean Can Begin An Adventure.

You Have To Be Submitted For The Pulitzer, And Unbeknownst To Us, A Choral Director Whom I Know Had Submitted Us.

Everyone Would Like To Be On Broadway, Cause If A Show Works, You Make A Great Deal Of Money And It Allows You To Write Other Shows.

Success Is Like Failure, It's How You Perceive It, It's What You Do With It, Not How You Achieve It.

The Art Of Making Art, Is Putting It Together.

Math Was My Big Interest When I Was In Prep School. I Was Considering Taking Math In College, And Majoring In It.

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.

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.

Beneath The Surface

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.

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.

Music Straightjackets A Poem And Prevents It From Breathing On Its Own, Whereas It Liberates A Lyric. Poetry Doesn't Need Music; Lyrics Do.

To Wish And Wait From Day To Day Will Never Keep The Wolves Away.

Everyone Tells Tiny Lies, What's Important Really Is The Size.

Music Is Structure Out Of Chaos

The Only Reason To Write Is From Love.

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.

Todd: The History Of The World, My Love -- Lovett: Save A Lot Of Graves, Do A Lot Of Relatives Favors! Todd: Is Those Below Serving Those Up Above! Lovett: Ev'rybody Shaves, So There Should Be Plenty Of Flavors! Todd: How Gratifying For Once To Know Both: That Those Above Will Serve Those Down Below!

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.

The Dumbing Down Of The Country Reflects Itself On Broadway. The Shows Get Dumber, And The Public Gets Used To Them.

Gotta Watch Out For Directors.

Art Is Craft, Not Inspiration.

There's A Hole In The World Like A Great Black Pit And The Vermin Of The World Inhabit It And Its Morals Aren't Worth What A Pig Could Spit And It Goes By The Name Of London. At The Top Of The Hole Sit The Privileged Few Making Mock Of The Vermin In The Lonely Zoo Turning Beauty To Filth And Greed... I Too Have Sailed The World And Seen Its Wonders, For The Cruelty Of Men Is As Wonderous As Peru But There's No Place Like London!

I Fell Into Lyric Writing Because Of Music. I Backed Into It.

Now, This One Might Be A Little Stringy, But Then Again, It's Fiddle Player." That Isn't Fiddle Player, It's Piccolo Player." How Can You Tell?" It's Piping Hot!" Then Blow On It First!

There's A Hole In The World Like A Great Black Pit And The Vermin Of The World Inhabit It ... And It Goes By The Name Of London.

With Videotaping, On The Second Generation You're Already Losing Some Of The Freshness.

Slotted Spoons Don't Hold Much Soup.

The Situation's Fraught, Fraughter Than I Thought, With Horrible, Impossible Possibilities!

Teaching Is A Sacred Profession. And Art Is A Form Of Teaching.

Having Just The Vision's No Solution, Everything Depends On Execution

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.

I Do Not Dwell On Dreams I Know How Soon A Dream Becomes An Expectation How Can I Have Expectations? Look At Me, No, Captain, Look At Me, Look At Me!

I Love Computers. I Love Writing On Them. I Love Gadgetry. The Thing Is: I Am A Slow Reader. So, If I Am Going To Get My Work Done, I Read, Like, A Newspaper And That's It. If I Got Into Websites And The Internet, I Wouldn't Get Any Work Done.

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.

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.

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 Chose And My World Was Shaken. So What? The Choice May Have Been Mistaken; The Choosing Was Not. You Have To Move On.

White. A Blank Page Or Canvas. So Many Possibilities.

I Liked My Father A Lot, But I Didn't See Him Very Often Because My Mother Was Bitter About Him. He Remarried, And I Used To Have To Sneak Off To See Him.

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.

Deciding What Is To Be Sung And What Is Not To Be Sung Is Really What Writing A Musical Is About.

Every Writer I've Ever Spoken To Feels Fraudulent In Some Way Or Other.

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.

In Not-for-profit Theater, You Don't Worry So Much About How The Audience Is Going To React. You Want To Make Them Absorb The Piece.

Everything Depends Upon Execution; Having Just A Vision Is No Solution.

In The Rodgers And Hammerstein Generation, Popular Hits Came Out Of Shows And Movies.

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.

Anything You Do, Let It Come From You. Then It Will Be New.

White. A Blank Page Or Canvas. The Challenge. Bring Order To The Whole Through Design, Composition, Tension, Balance, Light, And Harmony.

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.

Nowadays, There Are Sometimes More Producers Than There Are People In The Cast, Because It Takes That Much Money To Put A Show On.

I Like Songs That Are Part Of A Dramatic Texture, And Therefore I Like The Scenes To Be Active. I Wanna Follow The Story And That Means You Lean On The Actors.

I'm Before Him On My Knees, And He Kisses Me He Assumes I Lose My Reason And I Do. Men Are Stupid, Men Are Vain, Love's Disgusting, Love's Insane, A Humiliating Business-oh How True.

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.

He Came From A Rock Band And Even Though He Was Not A Lead Singer, I Knew He Was Musical Just From That. I Also Knew That He Was Intelligent Enough From Talking To Him, That He Would Not Play This Part Unless He Could Handle It Vocally. I Knew He Was Not About To Get Up There And Have To Have His Voice Dubbed Or Come Off Croaking. So Johnny Depp Casted Johnny Depp. I Trusted Him Entirely. I Knew That He Was No Fool And He Would Only Do It If He Felt He Could Handle It. I Told Him To Listen To The Score Carefully And If You Can Handle It, Fine By Me, And I Was Right.

Musicals Are So Expensive To Put On The Stage That You Have To Have The Backing Of A Corporate, You Have To Have Universal Studios Or Disney Or Somebody To Put In The Money.

Universal Studios

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.

Automobile In America,chromium Steel In America,wire-spoke Wheel In America,very Big Deal In America!immigrant Goes To America,many Hellos In America,nobody Knows In America,puerto Rico's In America!i Like The Shores Of America!comfort Is Yours In America!knobs On The Doors In America!wall-to-wall Floors In America!

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!

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.

Every Day A Little Death.

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.

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.

If The End Is Right, It Justifies The Beans!

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.

The Nice Thing About Doing A Crossword Puzzle Is, You Know There Is A Solution.

Hit Songs Did Not Come Out Of Musicals. Pop-rock Was Creating The Hits. There Were Very Few Songs That Made The Charts Out Of Any Broadway Musical.

You Move Just A Finger, Say The Slightest Word, Something's Bound To Linger-be Heard.

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.

By The Time I Was 22, I Was A Professional. A Young And Flawed Professional, But Not An Amateur.

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.

For Anyone Approaching Any One Of The Cast Albums, If They Don't Like What They Hear, It's Not The Performer's Fault.

Art, In Itself, Is An Attempt To Bring Order Out Of Chaos.

I Don't Like The Word 'career'. When Somebody Says To Me, 'oh, You've Had Such A Wonderful Career', I Think, 'career - That's After You're Dead.' I Just Don't Think That Way.

My Cage Has Many Rooms.

You Get Used To The Exact Amount Of Space Between Lines. You Write A Word And Then You Write An Alternate Word Over It. You Want Enough Room So You Can Read It, So The Lines Can't Be Too Close.

Puzzles Are Like Songs - A Good Puzzle Can Give You All The Pleasure Of Being Duped That A Mystery Story Can. It Has Surface Innocence, Surprise, The Revelation Of A Concealed Meaning, And The Catharsis Of Solution.

Lemuel Ayers Had Had A Huge Success Producing And Designing Kiss Me, Kate. He Wanted To Produce This As A Musical. I Got The Job. It Was A Professional Score.

When You Trance Out Properly, When You're Completely In That World, There Is No Other World, So There's No Conflict.

A Song Is Such A Short Form ... That 'the Slightest Flaw Seems Like A Mountain.' And So Every Song Needs To Be Revised 'til It's Close To Perfection... But Achieving Perfection Takes A Lot Of Energy.

I Was Never Much Of A Reader. I'm A Slow Reader, Which Is Unusual, Because I'm So Into Language And I Love Words So Much. But It's Hard For Me To Read.

Anything That Is White Is Sweet. Anything That Is Brown Is Meat. Anything That Is Grey, Don't Eat.

Swing Your Razor Wide! Sweeney, Hold It To The Skies!

My Personal Life And My Artistic Life Do Not Interfere With Each Other.

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