Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Sondheim Quotes from famous authors such as Keala Settle, Dennis DeYoung, Nancy Allen, Bernadette Peters, Randy Rainbow. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
Musically, I’m a huge fan of Stephen Sondheim, and I love, love ‘Sweeney Todd.’
2
It’s great when it all comes together in a great musical like ‘Sweeney Todd,’ when Stephen Sondheim writes songs from heaven, the book is good and the staging is good. But it’s very rare when that happens.
3
If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in ‘A Little Night Music’ – Oh my, it is perfection. The character gets to be funny, beautiful, sexy and smart all at the same time and have two men fighting over her. The show is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best… need I say more?
4
No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.
5
Sondheim’s work especially, and musical theater like that, just spoke to me so much and taught me so many lessons.
6
As a person, Stephen Sondheim is a very funny, very dry and very shy man. I’ve never witnessed any diva-ish moments, he just always seems so thrilled people are doing his work.
7
Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there’s great truth in the songs, and that’s what was so wonderful to find.
8
Tom Kitt aside – he’s in his own category with me, of course – Stephen Sondheim is one of my all-time favorite composers.
9
Sondheim informs us, more than any other composer, about the joys, passion and pain of being a woman living in various social conditions through the ages with frightening accuracy. Playing a variety of his characters has always made me feel like I’m having a free therapy session through his words and music!
10
To my mind, ‘Dear Brutus’ stands halfway between Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s ‘Into the Woods’. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality.
11
Say you have a young black kid, and you come to see a Sondheim show. You love the material, but you look on stage, and you don’t see anyone who looks like you. That puts a barrier between the audience and what they’re trying to absorb.
12
I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can’t analyze humor. You just have to get through it.
13
‘Sweeney Todd’ is my favorite Sondheim musical.
14
I think I enjoy Sondheim so much because of the lyrics. The lyrics, the cornucopia of options.
15
The first time I encountered Stephen Sondheim was like everyone else: through snatches of old songs people performed in drama school, through ‘Send in the Clowns,’ which everyone knew. I wasn’t aware at the time that he was the writing force behind ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Gypsy.’
16
Sondheim is New York.
17
Leonard Bernstein was probably the most significant formative influence on me – he was such an encompassing musician. I spent my teenage years absorbing him, and my other interests stemmed off of that. Bernstein led me to Sondheim and to Gershwin, and Sondheim led me to listening to Joni Mitchell.
18
Stephen Sondheim I am in awe of.
19
I first started listening to Sondheim’s work when I was a kid.
20
We got to see Sondheim shows, ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘Cats’ and all sorts of stuff. When you’re 10 or 11 years old, it’s just magnificent. The story-telling, the music – it lifts you out of your seat.
21
That’s one of the beauties of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim and their work together. They have such a depth to the emotional exploration of the story that they’re telling, but there’s always a release, and the release is a laugh.
22
I don’t think it’s that I don’t like Sondheim. It’s that I find it really… I don’t know how to describe it. Doing it is the most extraordinary thing. Because it’s like Shakespeare times 100 with singing. It’s that satisfying – and that demanding.
23
I think one of my favorite productions ever was Sondheim’s ‘Assassins’ at the Roundabout in 2004. Beyond brilliant.
24
In the Stephen Sondheim song, when something bad happens in the circus, they send in the clowns. In America’s political circus, they send in the lawyers.
25
The thing about Sondheim is that it does get very cerebral. You do need a faculty with words and a love for the lyrics to not just pull it off, but to have an appreciation for it.
26
Sondheim writes the music and lyrics, and because he’s so smart and goes so deep with his feelings, there’s a lot to explore, get involved with and learn about.
27
Stephen Sondheim is calculus for actors. The words are witty and brilliant and profound but complicated.
28
In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I’ve written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I’ve ever known who’s passed on.
29
I think Stephen Sondheim is a – and I hardly ever use this word – but this is as close as it gets to a genius.
30
I heard from Stephen Sondheim, who has become a great supporter of mine. There was no one bigger when I was growing up.
