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"So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work."
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"The only work I did for the next five years after splitting from Vincent was work I'd already lined up."
"I've done my best to work from a place of humility - always looking over your shoulder saying, "Does this suck?" and I think that's a good way to work. The other way to work is where you start to think, "I'm on fire, I'm amazing!" and I don't think that's the way to work."
"With Fellini, the fear dropped out of my work because it was such a happy experience... hanging out with Fellini, having pasta on the set with Fellini, and going out with Fellini!"
"My hand does the work and I don't have to think; in fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. It's like a dam in the brain that bursts."
"When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out."
Work,
"I really do hope that the Millennium Summit gives new impetus to the work of the United Nations."
Explore more quotes by Stephen Sondheim
"Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on."
"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."
"After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes."
"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."
"By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur."
"One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music."
"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."
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