Stay a child while you can be a child.
After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
The more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write.
You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.
The situation’s fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!
When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written.
Oh if life were made of moments Even now and then a bad one – ! But if life were only moments, Then you’d never know you had one.
Sometimes colleagues in performance are absolutely astonishing.
I was watching him crawl, Back over the wall-! Then bang! Crash! And the lightning flash! And- well, that’s another story, Never mind- Anyway...
A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you’ll do yourself a service.
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.
Art is craft, not inspiration.
Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reasons to write anything.
Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn’t need music; lyrics do.
Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words!
The art of making art, is putting it together...
Into the woods you go again You have to every now and then Into the woods, no telling when Be ready for the journey Into the woods, each time you go There’s more to learn of what you know.
Nowadays, there are sometimes more producers than there are people in the cast, because it takes that much money to put a show on.