Top 35 James Lapine Quotes

Words matter. These are the best James Lapine Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep r

The one thing you don’t want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something’s not quite right, it’s often about modulating what’s already there.
James Lapine
Most musicals are real crowd pleasers.
James Lapine
I’ve ended up working with Disney a lot, which is kind of peculiar. In theater, I’ve done a couple of projects with them and written a couple movies and whatnot.
James Lapine
I am thrilled to receive the Sondheim Award from the wonderful Signature Theatre. I have already received the invaluable gift of over twenty-five years of collaboration and friendship with Steve. Now I get to have his award, too!
James Lapine
I need an audience to look at what I’ve done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they’re understanding about what I’m trying to do and what they’re confused about.
James Lapine
I think visually… so, even when I’m writing a play, I’m envisioning it.
James Lapine
Fairy tales, which teach a moral lesson, are about ourselves. Myth deals with forces greater than ourselves.
James Lapine
Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you’re seeing them.
James Lapine
There are certain images that always haunt me.
James Lapine
I’m a very laid-back person.
James Lapine
I’d like to just say that there’s nothing darker than ‘Old Yeller’ and ‘Bambi’ and some of the early Disney stuff.
James Lapine
The music is the emotional substance of the show; the book just sets it up. Nobody goes to a musical to hear the book. That’s the way it works.
James Lapine
I did ‘Impromptu,’ which was a thrill and a horror all at once – my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.
James Lapine
As you get older, you realize happiness involves a lot of problems.
James Lapine
When you’re young, you envision happiness in such an idealized way.
James Lapine
Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, ‘Ohhh, it’s magic.’ Nothing’s magic. A thing doesn’t jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren’t good.
James Lapine
Something I like to do is watch someone else do their thing.
James Lapine
It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I’ve always been a sucker for that.
James Lapine
When you’re trying out on Broadway, it’s very hectic, and you’re making changes night after night. There’s a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you’re writing for actors who are in it – and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.
James Lapine
You can’t be theoretical when you’re building a musical.
James Lapine
I like to keep a low profile.
James Lapine
When you grow up, you don’t realize that your parents are any different than anybody else’s. And their behavior – you have nothing to compare it to. So that is what normal is, even if it’s abnormal.
James Lapine
In most audience-participation shows, the participant is so clearly not a part of what’s going on that it’s the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes it funny.
James Lapine
Some of the things I’ve done in my life, I’ve done to make money because I had to make money… and some things I did just because they were on my mind and they were of interest to me… some of the little plays I wrote.
James Lapine
I’ve grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.
James Lapine
I have nothing to hide.
James Lapine
Sometimes good news is hard to absorb.
James Lapine
I love photography… I’d like to write a show about photography.
James Lapine
I’m never so into the three-act movie thing. I know that’s the form that people talk about, but it seems to me, in the movie, you just have to keep charging forward. You couldn’t start over again like you do after an intermission. You just had to keep the plot moving forward.
James Lapine
We live in an era of reinvention: Madonna and everybody desperately trying to change their persona.
James Lapine
I’m drawn to dreams.
James Lapine
I was a youngish man entering fatherhood when we wrote

I was a youngish man entering fatherhood when we wrote ‘Woods,’ a patchwork of classic fairy tales with an original tale sewn in. I had dedicated my libretto to my baby daughter.
James Lapine
I’m a hippie child of the ’60s. What drives me crazy about mass media entertainment is that it’s so often devoid of any ideas.
James Lapine
If you’re like me and nosy, you’re always eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.
James Lapine
I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.
James Lapine