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"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, American Composer

Language, Poets, Poor, Writers

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"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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"Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues."

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Explore more quotes by Stephen Sondheim

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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