#ma

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. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#create #disbelief #fourth #having #i

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. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#audience #cry #feel #getting #i

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

#been #buttons #gadget #gadgets #had

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. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#drowned #generally #get #language #lyric

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#intimately #level #math #music #necessarily

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. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#celebrity #clothes #collector #designed #hands

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. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#aware #hardest #lyrics #make #music

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

— Stephen Sondheim

#during #father #hammerstein #i #many

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work. ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#exactly #fast #get #good #good songs

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? ↗

— Stephen Sondheim

#art #compared #dates #fact #feel