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

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
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

Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
Stephen Sondheim

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

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

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

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

Gotta watch out for directors.
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


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

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

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

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

I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
Stephen Sondheim

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.
Stephen Sondheim

I would have been a geologist.
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

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