David Friedman Quotes

I write and direct the Duke University Children’s Hospital Benefit every year.

I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There’s something that has always been difficult about that for me.

For Hunchback, we needed this live, gigantic choir. So we went to London and said, This is Disney! I need singers who can sing high D’s, hold them for 18 seconds, and do it 60 times!

I’ve been doing a lot of studying singing, and I’m thinking of recording an album containing all my old war horses and putting out a songbook at the same time.

I’ve written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

It sometimes feels like I’m not doing anything.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I’m trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

I’m not comfortable singing in front of people yet. That’s going to take another 100 performances.

When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write, and if 10 people wanted to hear it, that’s fine.

As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself.

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it’s not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

Composition is definitely what I’m born to do, and it came last.

My career keeps shifting; I keep doing the next thing and it keeps growing.

As a person, I’m not that hopeful, but somehow the hopeful part of me reveals itself through my songs.

There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It’s not like I’m performing; I’m just singing stuff that I really believe.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.

When I got to Broadway, I conducted five Broadway shows.

I was talking to my spiritual advisor. I got a letter from somebody who said that they were about to kill themselves, but they listened to a song of mine and it saved their lives.

I don’t like to produce albums. I hate producing albums, as a matter of fact, because I’m an obsessed mixer and I can’t leave it alone.