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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

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

"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."
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