Words matter. These are the best Sondheim Quotes from famous people such as Lesley Nicol, Michael Ball, Josh Groban, Imelda Staunton, Daniel Radcliffe, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
‘Sweeney Todd’ is my favorite Sondheim musical.
As a performer, once you’ve understood the genre of musical theatre, you can tire very quickly of the two-dimensional stuff. With Sondheim, it’s always a challenge. It’s difficult and exhilarating and he’s so good on the complexities of relationships and on things going wrong.
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.
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.
My parents were what I like to call proper musical fans. Lots of Sondheim was played in the car.
Sondheim’s work especially, and musical theater like that, just spoke to me so much and taught me so many lessons.
I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can’t analyze humor. You just have to get through it.
I think Stephen Sondheim is a – and I hardly ever use this word – but this is as close as it gets to a genius.
Stephen Sondheim is calculus for actors. The words are witty and brilliant and profound but complicated.
The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.
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.
There is genuine healing in a beautifully crafted musical theatre song, like Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Losing My Mind,’ or a pop music gem like Joni Mitchell’s ‘Help Me.’
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!
I think I enjoy Sondheim so much because of the lyrics. The lyrics, the cornucopia of options.
Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.
Musically, I’m a huge fan of Stephen Sondheim, and I love, love ‘Sweeney Todd.’
Stephen Sondheim I am in awe of.
Hollywood has always seen Sondheim as a caviar brand unsuitable for a popcorn industry.
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.
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.
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.
Sondheim is New York.
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.
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.
I heard from Stephen Sondheim, who has become a great supporter of mine. There was no one bigger when I was growing up.
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.’
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.
I first started listening to Sondheim’s work when I was a kid.
Even though we try not to be nostalgic about drawing from old music, I’m always inspired by things like old Cole Porter songs or the words in the Gershwin songs or even Stephen Sondheim, where there’s a real craft to them but it isn’t only that you’re hearing the words it’s that it links so well with the music.
