Top 69 Quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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