Stephen Sondheim Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.”

“I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.”

“The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.”

“Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't 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 you're making art.”