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"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, American Composer

Music, Writer, Writing

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"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."

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"There are so few directors who are musical who appreciate music."

Alex North, American Composer

"I can see me continuing to make the best music I can, and let the chips fall where they may."

Lee Ann Womack, American Musician

"88% of what we call good songs aren't really good. They merely remind us of a good time we once had."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher

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"I just really longed to do music that reflected me as an adult and music that I thought was for other adults."

Rick Derringer, American Musician

"Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't, I don't really see a point to it."

Alanis Morissette, Canadian Musician

"I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised."

Sting, British Musician

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"So all of the music had reference, or is inspired by something of the dharma that I've come in contact with."

Joseph Jarman, American Musician

"Every music - except dance music, which is for dancing, I suppose - is for the spirit of the human being, and not for the body."

Klaus Schulze, German Composer

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"A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit."

Martha Reeves, American Musician

"There's nothing to compare to live music, there just isn't anything."

Gloria Gaynor, American Musician

Explore more quotes by Stephen Sondheim

"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."

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

"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."

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

"Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on."

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

"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."

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

"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?"

"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."

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