Top 30 Tim Rice Quotes

The biggest lesson I had in my life was failure.

I have always been obsessed with America, the geography, the history, and, of course, the music. I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled through the country a lot, and, in a kind of anorak way, I’ve noted which states I’ve visited and which ones I’ve been to most often and all that sort of detail.

I am sure if you went back to the days of ‘My Fair Lady,’ they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that.

Although I’ve got lots of pals in showbiz, I haven’t got that many close friends.

I hate doing interviews. I get really bored talking about me.

I would love to write a song with the Everly brothers. But it’s probably best not to work with someone you admire: they’ll just show up your inadequacies.

I do enjoy Singapore very much.

I love trains. I don’t even mind First Great Western, which is a stupid name because it implies every carriage is first class, but they’re not.

In the Bible, there is absolutely no motivation for Judas, other than that he is sort of a 100 percent figure of evil. And it seemed to me that that was probably not the case.

When I went to do law, I kind of drifted through that and thought, ‘I can pass these exams.’ And I didn’t – I failed three times, and each time I did worse and failed by a bigger margin. And that taught me so much.

One of the problems with musicals and opera is you can’t ever hear all the words.

I like to write in fairly everyday language – I’ve always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn’t sound like a song.

I think failure is the best thing for some people. It tells you whether you’re in the right job or the wrong one.

I went to religious schools. I wasn’t that enthusiastic, by and large, but it sunk in.

I hope ‘Chess’ will hit the big screen. It seems a natural to me. Good venues, tunes, and politics.

I have radios everywhere around the house, very old battered ones that I’ve had for years and years. None of them are digital.

It’s a cliche, but most people are good at something, and most people are good at what they’re enthusiastic about.

I always think ‘Pity the Child’ is a goodie. And I’ve always liked a song called ‘Heaven Help My Heart,’ which is quite a corny number.

September is my favourite month, particularly in Cornwall. I felt, even as a child, that if you get a wonderful day in September, you think: ‘This could be one of the last, the summer is nearly over.’ If you get a wonderful day in May, you think: ‘So what, there’s more coming.’

In the world of musical theatre, if everyone says it’s a good idea, you wonder why nobody has done it before.

I worked in a petrol station on the A1 one summer. I enjoyed it except when I was on latrine duty.

I recently declined to support a Conservative function because I’m so incensed about these wind turbines. Like all so-called climate-change doubters, I am very pro the environment, but I strongly believe that it is something that can only be cured locally. Some insane overall scheme isn’t going to cure all the problems.

I would like to write a play.

I love watching ‘Pointless.’

There was so much on ‘Superstar’ that we didn’t intend. I mean, there were things that we did which were innovative, but some of them were forced on us because we couldn’t get anybody to do the show. ‘Evita’ was much more sophisticated. That doesn’t make it better, but it does make it different. We knew what we were doing.

Maintaining our standard; that’s our challenge day-in and day-out.

Very few artistic partnerships last more than 10 years, and if they do they tend to go down the tubes.

Digital is a disaster. No digital radio has the correct time and they don’t even agree with each other.

I must have written 15 lyrics for ‘The Lion King,’ and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn’t work, or else the characters changed.

Two songs I like are ‘High Flying Adored’ and ‘Another Suitcase Another Hall,’ both from ‘Evita.’