Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ah, but if you have no expectations, You can never have a disappointment.
The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.
I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.
I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!
I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged.
When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.
The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.
Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
I've always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I've done.
You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
With videotaping, on the second generation you're already losing some of the freshness.
The situation's fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.
The Tonys ignored West Side Story. The Tonys ignored Gypsy. It's a kind of public humiliation.
When the song is part of the action and working as dialogue, even two minutes is way too long.
Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.
By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.
Anything that is white is sweet. Anything that is brown is meat. Anything that is grey, don't eat.
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.
Success is like failure, It's how you perceive it, It's what you do with it, not how you achieve it.
I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway.
For me it's more fun to find an unexpected moment for a character to sing when you don't expect them to.
I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.
When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.
I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.
The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.
You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.
Generally, the best recording is the original cast, because that's the way the piece grew: integrally, with them.
Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.
The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.
When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.
I took piano lessons when I was 6. I didn't want to go on with it. I don't remember being moved by a piece of music.
For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
The concerts you enjoy together/ Neighbors you annoy together/ Children you destroy together,/ That keep marriage in tact.
Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I'm handsome and heir to a throne?
Sometimes I'll ask the book writer to write a monologue, not to be performed, just as if they were notes for the character.
I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.
I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
Oh if life were made of moments Even now and then a bad one--! But if life were only moments, Then you'd never know you had one.
There's a hole in the world Like a great black pit And the vermin of the world Inhabit it ... And it goes by the name of London.