Top 150 Stephen Sondheim Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If I cannot fly, let me sing.”

— Stephen Sondheim

2. “Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.”

— Stephen Sondheim

3. “White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities.”

— Stephen Sondheim

4. “Ah, but if you have no expectations, You can never have a disappointment.”

— Stephen Sondheim

5. “Teaching is a sacred profession. And art is a form of teaching.”

— Stephen Sondheim

6. “Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new.”

— Stephen Sondheim

7. “Having just the vision’s no solution, everything depends on execution.”

— Stephen Sondheim

Featured in: Vision Quotes

8. “White. A blank page or canvas. The challenge. Bring order to the whole Through design, composition, tension, balance, light, and harmony.”

— Stephen Sondheim

9. “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.”

— Stephen Sondheim

10. “Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.”

— Stephen Sondheim

11. “Any moment, big or small, Is a moment, after all. Seize the moment, skies may fall Any moment.”

— Stephen Sondheim

12. “I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.”

— Stephen Sondheim

13. “Art is craft, not inspiration.”

— Stephen Sondheim

14. “Sometimes people leave you Halfway through the wood Others may decieve you You decide what’s good You decide alone But no one is alone.”

— Stephen Sondheim

15. “Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

— Stephen Sondheim

16. “Nice is different than good.”

— Stephen Sondheim

17. “Success is like failure, It’s how you perceive it, It’s what you do with it, not how you achieve it.”

— Stephen Sondheim

18. “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.”

— Stephen Sondheim

19. “Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”

— Stephen Sondheim

20. “All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists.”

— Stephen Sondheim

21. “Stay a child while you can be a child.”

— Stephen Sondheim

22. “Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.”

— Stephen Sondheim

23. “The nice thing about doing a crossword puzzle is, you know there is a solution.”

— Stephen Sondheim

24. “Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn’t need music; lyrics do.”

— Stephen Sondheim

25. “My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.”

— Stephen Sondheim

26. “The only reason to write is from love.”

— Stephen Sondheim

27. “I’ve always preferred actors who sing to singers who act in all the shows I’ve done.”

— Stephen Sondheim

28. “Am I not sensitive, clever, well-mannered, considerate, passionate, charming, as kind as I’m handsome and heir to a throne?”

— Stephen Sondheim

29. “To wish and wait From day to day Will never keep The wolves away.”

— Stephen Sondheim

30. “I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry – just making them feel – is paramount to me.”

— Stephen Sondheim

31. “I do not hope for what I cannot have! I do not cling to things I cannot keep!”

— Stephen Sondheim

32. “The art of making art, is putting it together...”

— Stephen Sondheim

33. “The man i’ll never be, Who remembers him?”

— Stephen Sondheim

34. “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.”

— Stephen Sondheim

35. “I read to see myself in other people’s lives.”

— Stephen Sondheim

36. “You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.”

— Stephen Sondheim

37. “If the end is right, it justifies the beans!”

— Stephen Sondheim

38. “They all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett Even I. Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief For the rest of us death would be relief.”

— Stephen Sondheim

39. “You’re so nice. You’re not good, you’re not bad, You’re just nice. I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right. I’m the witch. You’re the world.”

— Stephen Sondheim

40. “The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure.”

— Stephen Sondheim

41. “Puzzles are like songs – A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.”

— Stephen Sondheim

42. “It’s not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.”

— Stephen Sondheim

43. “The situation’s fraught, Fraughter than I thought, With horrible, impossible possibilities!”

— Stephen Sondheim

44. “Tonight, tonight, won’t be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.”

— Stephen Sondheim

45. “So here’s to the girls on the go- Everybody tries Look into their eyes and you’ll see what they know: Everybody dies. A toast to that invincible bunch – The dinosaurs surviving the crunch – Let’s hear it for the ladies who lunch – Everybody rise!”

— Stephen Sondheim

46. “Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.”

— Stephen Sondheim

47. “Every day a little death.”

— Stephen Sondheim

48. “My main goal is to tell a story.”

— Stephen Sondheim

49. “I’m a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I’m obviously compulsive about it.”

— Stephen Sondheim

50. “I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.”

— Stephen Sondheim