Famous Quotes & Sayings

Stephen Sondheim

A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.

Stephen Sondheim

On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.

Stephen Sondheim

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

Stephen Sondheim

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

Stephen Sondheim

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.

Stephen Sondheim

If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.

Stephen Sondheim

There's something inimical about the camera and song.

Stephen Sondheim

I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

Stephen Sondheim

Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

Stephen Sondheim

Almost all the shows I've been connected with have been extremely well cast. They're playing the show, not just doing the songs.

Stephen Sondheim

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

Stephen Sondheim

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

Stephen Foster

I sought to reform minstrelsy among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order. ... Some of my songs should be performed in a pathetic, not a comic style.

Stephen Fry

If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words—strike that, I love words—and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.

St. Vincent

I wrote 'Actor' all on the computer. I didn't touch any instruments until I was in the studio. So while I had all these ornate arrangements, I didn't have any songs.

St. Vincent

A song has a life of its own. It's an autonomous thing, separate from your own experience, almost. And the mere repetition of it means it's subject to change; it means approaching it differently, expressing different emotional aspects of it. It doesn't feel like wallowing.

St. Vincent

I think in some ways, it can do a listener a disservice to explain a song. I think I'd rather leave a little room for people to put themselves in it.

St. Jerome

Music to me is a voice, my voice, it's my way of expressing what colours can I bring in, what emotions, what feel. What ideas can I bring out from these instruments that would make this song come alive.

Sri Chinmoy

Man-made religions find fault with one another, whereas God-made religion is eternally a oneness-song - God-manifestation through human aspiration on earth.

Sri Aurobindo

We are sons of God And must be even as he.

Sri Chinmoy

Lack of harmony comes when I feel that I know how to do something better than you. Lack of harmony is the song and dance of superiority. Because everybody feels superior, disharmony at every moment is entering into our lives.

Sonu Nigam

When I started‚ I faced a lot of hardships. People used to call me a Rafi clone because I used to sing my favourite singer's songs. Then 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' happened. It gave me a good break.

Ruth Brown

There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.

Roger Miller

The human mind is a wonderful thing, it starts working from before you're born and doesn't stop till you sit down to write a song.

Roger McGuinn

I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can't recall all the songs on it. There's some finger picking on it.

Roger McGuinn

But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.

Roger McGuinn

Once I've written a song, I sometimes refine them.

Roger Daltrey

When I sing, I try to live the song or live the emotion of the song. The space I'm in doesn't exist. It's another world.

Sam Shepard

To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.

Rush Limbaugh

I thought we were gonna get "Smooth Operator." That song was big in the '90s.

Thomas Mars

In France a lot of songs were ruined by their associations with commercials. But so far no Apple commercial has ruined a song for me.

Thomas Mars

I discovered that a lot of the songs I like, they're fantasies, a vision of something, but you don't actually live there.

W. H. Auden

The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.