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"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."

Stephen Sondheim, American Composer

Music, Poetry, Difference

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"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."

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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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"You can't have personal investors anymore because it's too expensive, so you have to have corporate investment or a lot of rich people."

"The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service."

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