One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music. – Stephen Sondheim
Im interested in the theater because Im interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music. – Stephen Sondheim
Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audiences imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean theres no fourth wall. – Stephen Sondheim
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. – Stephen Sondheim
We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Virginibus Puerisque II,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881