Top 69 Quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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.

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.'

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 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.

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

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

Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.

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